Prairie Hardball (5 page)

While Andy and Jack Wilton were with the RCMP, I put in some family time by the hotel pool with my mother and sister. My father had gone to their room to lie down. The girls were having a grand time on the slides. Amy, who is at the awkward age between childhood and adolescence, had opted for the former for the afternoon, and her giggles and shrieks outdid even Claire’s.

“It’s good to see them,” I said to Sheila. “They’re growing up too fast.”

“I know. Sometimes I wish I could just freeze them at the age they are now. The next phase is going to be hell. Amy’s going to be a teenager, and Claire’s going to feel left behind.”

“It happened with us,” I agreed.

“But it worked out in the end,” my mother said. “And the girls will be fine, too.”

“Things are different now, Mum,” Sheila said. “We grew up in innocent times. The temptations are more dangerous now. The stakes are higher.”

“You’ll survive it, Sheila dear,” our mother said. “After all, I did.”

My sister and I exchanged a look, and laughed.

“But you didn’t know half of what we were up to,” I said. “And what you did know about, you disapproved of.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” she said.

“Well, you didn’t disapprove of Sheila, that’s true,” I jibed. “She was Miss Perfect.”

“I had to be, with you misbehaving all over the place,” she said. “It was such a burden.”

“Burden? What about my burden?” I said. “I had to follow in your footsteps all through school. All the teachers thought I was going to be just like you, and I disappointed every one of them.”

“That’s true,” Sheila said, smugly. We both laughed.

“Stop it, the two of you,” our mother said. “I am proud of both of you, in different ways. Even if you did try me sorely from time to time.”

Claire’s arrival put an end to our ritual spat. She was shivering and blue-lipped. Sheila wrapped a towel around her.

“It’s the funnest, Mum,” she said. “You should try it. The slide. You too, Kate.”

“I’ll pass,” I said. I hadn’t changed into my bathing suit. I prefer to do my swimming in fresh lakes, out of doors.

“Besides, I think you’ve had enough,” Sheila said. “I want you both to have a rest. You’ve got a late night coming up, and I don’t want you to be cranky.”

“Get serious,” Claire said. “I’m not taking any nap.”

“I didn’t say you had to nap. I just want you to have some quiet time,” Sheila said.

“Just ten more slides, please?” Claire bargained.

“Five.”

“Seven and a half?” Claire countered.

“If you can do half a slide, I want to be there to see it,” Sheila laughed. “Go ahead, but tell Amy it’s almost time to pack it in.”

As Claire ran off, calling to her sister, Edna Summers rolled up with her walker.

“Is this a private family session, or can I join you?”

“Of course,” my mother said. “Sheila, get Edna a chair.”

Ever obedient, Sheila was up before she finished asking.

“I got bored in my room, so I thought I’d see what trouble I could find down here,” Edna said. “I was watching the ball game, but the Titans were already up six runs in the second inning.”

I looked at my watch. It was only three, but with the time difference, the four o’clock game was already an hour old.

“Do you think I could get a cup of tea?” Edna asked.

I beat Sheila to it this time.

“I’ll go see what I can do,” I said, jumping up. On my way into the restaurant, I ran into Andy and Jack.

“Hey, Kate,” Jack said. “Want to join us for a beer?”

“I’d love to, but tea is the order of the day by the pool. What did the Mounties have to say?”

“They said not to worry about it,” Andy said. “For what it’s worth.”

“Good. See what you can do to reassure Mum and the others. I’ll get the beers.”

I found a waitress and placed our orders, then went back to the table. My mother and Edna had been joined by another couple. The wife was large and sturdy-looking, with her hair cut into a short, no-nonsense style. Her husband was tall and lanky, with the look, and tan, of a farmer, the skin on his forehead paler than the rest of his weathered face.

“Kate, this is Margaret Deneka and her husband, Peter,” my mother said. “We used to call her Meg the Peg when she played third base for the Belles.”

“Because of her great arm,” Edna explained.

Mrs. Deneka grinned and made a quick, graceful throwing movement with her right arm. Her husband smiled fondly at her, but his look was also faintly worried.

“Please sit down and join us,” my mother said.

“Shall we, Peter?”

“I think you should rest,” he said. “You have a big night tonight. You know, the banquet.”

“He takes good care of me,” she said. “My mind isn’t what it used to be, you know, sometimes I forget things. It’s so nice to see all the girls, I feel like I’m twenty-five again. But I’ll just follow orders.”

“Before you go, Mrs. Deneka,” Jack said, “I wanted to ask you if you got any strange letters lately. About this induction.”

A frown crossed her face.

“I don’t think so,” she said, then peered up at her husband. “Dear? Did I get any letters?”

“No, nothing like that,” he said, then threw Jack a quick glance and a small nod. “We’d better be going now. Have that little nap.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ll be toddling along now. We’ll have plenty of chances to chat later. Lovely to see you, Edna. And you too, Helen. Is Carl with you?”

“Carl? Oh, you mean my husband, Douglas? Yes, he’s just resting now.”

“Oh, yes, Douglas. What was I thinking of?”

She tapped her forehead. “Just this pesky brain of mine,” she said. “Time to give it a rest.”

She took her husband’s arm and gave us a little finger flutter of a wave.

“See you later. Toodle-oo.”

We waited until she left.

“She got a letter, all right,” Jack said. “The old dear just forgot it.”

“More likely her husband kept it from her,” I said. “I’ll ask him about it later.”

“It’s all very well for you young people,” my mother said, with surprising anger. “Making fun of someone because she’s old. She used to be smarter than any of you. When you’re old, I hope you remember this moment and feel badly.”

She got up and left the table. Sheila and I looked at each other in astonishment.

“I don’t know what got into her,” I said to Jack. “This isn’t like her.”

“She’s right, you know,” Edna said. “You could have put it a bit more diplomatically.”

“But still,” I said. “She’s not usually so, well, blunt.”

“Blunt? She was downright rude,” Sheila said.

“She’s probably more nervous about the letters than she’s saying,” Andy said.

“And about the big night in the spotlight,” I added.

“We’re all a little nervous,” Edna agreed.

We were interrupted by a great shriek from the girls in the pool. We looked over in time to see Virna Wilton, in a bright pink suit and a flowered bathing cap, spiralling down the biggest slide to land with a great splash.

“And then, there’s my mother,” Jack said, shaking his head.

The forty-ounce poodle was Andy’s undoing. The grand prize in the raffle for the Baseball Hall of Fame, it sat on a table, its little pink crochet head tilted to one side, its little pink crochet front paws raised. The crochet body cunningly concealed a bottle of rye, and Andy lost control the moment he set eyes upon it. He stood in the middle of the Battleford Community Recreation Centre fighting off the giggles, with tears of laughter filling his eyes. I socked him on the arm.

“Stop it,” I whispered, trying not to lose control myself. “Someone will notice.”

“I have to get a ticket. I’ve got to win the poodle.”

“Not until you stop laughing. That nice woman selling them probably made it herself. She’ll think you’re laughing at her.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I’m not laughing at her,” he said, back under control. “I’m laughing at the concept.”

“No you’re not. You’re laughing at Saskatchewan, and as far as I’m concerned, that means you’re laughing at me. And I don’t like being laughed at, mister.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me his most sincere look, laughter still in his eyes.

“I’m not laughing at you or the province that made you the wonderful woman you are today. I promise.”

“Apology accepted, even if it wasn’t, technically, offered.”

“Good,” he said, taking my hand to shake it. “We’re friends again. Now can we buy a ticket? I’ve got to have that poodle.”

The tickets themselves nearly set him off one more time. They were playing cards. When we had each selected one, the woman selling them tore them in half and gave one piece to us and put the other into a goldfish bowl. Andy got the nine of clubs from the Grey Cup commemorative deck; I got the joker from the deck with the bunnies. He stuck them in his pocket and we went to find the bar.

Amy and Claire found us first, Claire skittering through the crowd like a running back looking for daylight, Amy following at a more sedate, grown-up, pace.

“We got tickets, and Mum said we could have pop!” Claire said. “Can you come with us to get it?”

“Walk this way,” I said, bending my knees and pointing my feet in opposite directions. Claire, giggling, waddled after me. Amy and Andy looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

There was a crowd at the bar, a service counter between the tiny galley kitchen and the main hall.

“I’ve got the elbows for this job,” Andy said. “What do want?”

Cokes for the girls. Vodka and tonic for me. He was back in a few minutes with four glasses, two of them empty.

“Pop’s free, so I got us doubles. Mix is over on a table in the corner, he said.”

As it turned out, there was no tonic, just Coke and Sprite in two-litre bottles, a bucket of ice, a pitcher of water, and another with orange stuff I recognized from lunch.

I put some ice in my plastic glass, then raised it to Andy.

“I’ll pretend it’s a Martini,” I said. “Very dry. What have you got?”

“Rye,” he said, reaching for the Sprite. “What else.”

Jack Wilton came up behind us, with Edna Summers holding his arm with one hand and a sturdy, four-footed cane with the other. Edna was a round cloud of pink ruffles, and Jack was handsome and sort of country-club American in a blue blazer and chinos.

“Hello, all,” Edna said. “Isn’t this exciting?”

“Hi, Mrs. Summers,” Claire said. “You look pretty.”

“Thank you, dear, so do you. You, too, Amy.”

“What about me?” Andy joked.

“You look lovely, too.”

“Where is your mother?” I asked Jack. “I hope the water slide didn’t do her in.”

“Not a chance,” he smiled. “I have to go back and pick her up. She wasn’t quite ready, and Edna didn’t want to wait.”

“I need a little more time with this darned stick,” she said. “But I was for sure not going to roll into the Hall of Fame on a walker. Besides, Virna’s never been on time for anything in her life. We always used to call her ‘the late Virna Wilton.’ Besides, she just wants to make a big entrance.”

“Edna, you promised not to give anything away,” Jack said.

The former catcher smiled and winked at Claire, then locked her lips with an imaginary key.

“Now, Jack, maybe you could turn this ticket they gave me at the door into a rye and Seven.”

“Are you all right for a minute on your own?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’m fine. It’s just the knees. If I need to sit down, Kate will get me to a chair.”

“We’ll be over by the display area,” I said to Jack, pointing across the room where my parents and some of the other players were gathered.

“What table are you at?” Edna asked, as we made our way.

“Table thirteen,” Amy said. “That’s the Belles table, so we’re all there.”

“Not me or your Gram,” Edna said. “Or Jack’s mum either. We’re sitting up there at the head table. That’s because tonight we’re the most important people in the room. What do you think about that?”

“Cool,” Claire said.

“Cool as a cucumber,” Edna agreed. Claire giggled. Amy rolled her eyes again.

The head table was raised along the far end of the long room. Arranged below it were two ranks of long tables, each made up with white linen and flower centrepieces with blue candles in them to match the crêpe-paper streamers draped from the girders in the ceiling and the balloons taped to the walls. It looked as if it had been decorated by the prom committee at a school for the imaginationally challenged. Some tables were already full of eager-looking people. Past their suppertime, no doubt.

“I wonder which one is unlucky thirteen?” Andy wondered.

“Over there,” Claire pointed. “Mum and me saved seats for everyone.”

“You should have said ‘Mum and I’ saved seats,” Amy said. Claire stuck out her tongue.

“She’s right,” I said. “But whoever did it, it was thoughtful. Thank you.”

In the display area, there were large photographs of each of the women being inducted as well as scrapbooks and other memorabilia that had been donated to the Hall of Fame.

“Isn’t that your bat, Edna?” my mother asked, as we joined them. “It’s got your number on the handle.”

“That’s the one that beat the Peaches,” she said. “That’s the one that hit the home run.”

“And you’re giving it to the museum?”

“It might as well be here as in the garbage after I die.”

“Please, let’s not be morbid,” my mother fussed. “It’s a night for celebration.”

“Nothing morbid about thinking about death,” Edna said cheerfully. “It’s going to come to all of us sooner or later. In our cases, Helen, sooner. Can’t pretend otherwise.”

Jack came up and handed her a glass.

“I’m going to get Mom,” he said. “Can you see that Edna gets to where she has to go, Kate?”

“Of course,” I said. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Where do you have to be, Edna?” Andy asked.

“Oh, there’s some kind of official picture being taken at six o’clock. I don’t know where.”

“I do,” my mother said, looking at her watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes yet.”

Another couple joined us then. The woman was wearing a long dress in bold vertical black-and-red stripes, which served to emphasize, rather than hide, the cruel curve of her spine from osteoporosis. But her infirmity didn’t stop her from making an effort. Her bleached blonde hair was done in an elaborate helmet with kiss curls at the temples, and she was in full glamour makeup of an earlier era. Her gloomy-looking husband, who was even shorter than she, wore a black blazer with gold buttons and a bow tie that matched the red of her dress. I recognized them as a couple I’d seen checking in in the lobby earlier, dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts.

“Shirley and Bert Goodman,” my mother said in introduction, “This is my husband, Reverend Douglas Henry, and our daughter, Kate, and her . . . friend, Inspector Andy Munro.”

She paused only for a small, disapproving, beat, but I heard it. I smiled and shook hands with the Goodmans.

“Shirley was our star pitcher,” my mother said. “She led the league in wins in 1945.”

“Now, tell me right away,” Shirley said, “tell me if you are the one who writes the baseball for the
Toronto Planet
.”

I admitted it.

“I knew it, didn’t I, Bert? Didn’t I always say that she must be Helen’s daughter? Didn’t I always say that? That she must be Helen Henry’s daughter because she surely does know her ball. I must have said that a hundred times.”

“At least, dear,” her husband said. He was wearing a hearing aid in his right ear. I wondered how often he turned it off.

“Well, I’m just thrilled to meet you,” Shirley went on. “I read your write-ups every day. We live in Etobicoke, you see, so we’re
Planet
readers. Aren’t we, Bert?”

He didn’t bother to agree, just took another mournful drink.

“How long have you lived in Ontario?” I asked.

“Most of our married life, haven’t we, Bert? We moved just after our wedding in 1950, and we have enjoyed our bliss there ever since. This is our first trip back in years.”

“How nice,” I said, for want of anything more intelligent.

“I was just saying to your mother how wonderful it is to get the gals together like this again. I keep up through the newsletter, but it’s not the same. And I say it’s about time this Hall of Fame recognized us. We’re getting our due too late. What about poor Wilma Elshaw? She died five months ago.”

“I met her brother this afternoon,” Mum said. “He’s here to represent her. That’s him over there, in the blue suit.”

She pointed to a tall, slightly stooped man with glasses, standing with a group of men by the bar. He was the only one not laughing. He looked fit, considering his age.

“Didn’t she come from around here somewhere?” Shirley said. “I think I remember that she did.”

“Yes, right here in Battleford,” my mother said, “but she made her home in Indiana.”

“Well, of course, she did. I knew that. And who else is here? We just got in this afternoon. Is dear Virna here?”

“Her son’s just gone to get her,” I said.

“She’d best hurry, they’re going to want us for the group photograph soon,” my mother said.

We suddenly became aware of a commotion across the room, by the door. Edna looked up and laughed.

“Never fear, Virna’s here. And how!”

We all turned to see Virna Wilton make her entrance, dressed in a goldenrod-yellow Racine Belles uniform, with her head held high and a grin all over her face. Jack at her side, she waved both arms over her head to acknowledge the applause that erupted at the sight of her. The Goodmans went towards her, but the rest of us stayed back to watch.

“Darn her, anyway, she can still fit into it,” Edna muttered.

“That’s what they wore?” Amy asked, momentarily startled out of her world-weary pose. “Skirts to play baseball?”

“We wore skirts for everything back then,” my mother said. “Ladies didn’t wear pants.”

“And the league wanted to make sure everyone knew we were ladies,” Edna laughed. “We wanted to play in pants, but they stuck us with those stupid uniforms. You couldn’t even slide in them without losing half the skin on your legs. I’ve still got scars. Mind you, Virna always did wear hers a little shorter than regulations, as you can see. But, darn her, she’s still got the legs for it, at her age.”

“The ballplayers always say the legs are the first to go,” I mused. “But in women, they’re what last the longest.”

“At least she’s not wearing her spikes,” Edna said.

“I don’t think the floors would take it,” I said, noting that she had compromised with black leather high-top Reeboks that went well with the knee-length socks and didn’t look too incongruously modern.

“I don’t know where she gets her nerve,” my mother said. “I could never do such a thing.”

“She always had nerve, Helen,” Edna answered. “Virna Wilton never lacked for nerve.”

“We’d better be getting to the other room for pictures, Edna,” my mother said, looking at her watch. “We’ll see you all later.”

“Good luck, dear,” my father said. “You look lovely tonight.”

And she did, in a pretty flowered suit of some soft synthetic material she’d bought in Regina for the occasion. She excused her extravagance by reminding herself she could wear it to a wedding they were attending in September.

“Knock ’em dead, Mum,” I said. “You too, Edna.”

But they were already gone, Edna holding on to my mother’s arm. Two extraordinary women on their way to the moment of their lives.