Reach the Shining River (10 page)

Lloyd leaned forward in his chair and thrust a finger into Emmett’s chest. “Who is he?”

“An old friend,” Emmett said.

“
Who
!”

“Mickey McDermott. I went to school with him. Straight as they come. And for what it’s worth, he hates KCPD. With a passion.”

Lloyd stood up and paced the room. “Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you tell me this?” he said to Roddy.

“I didn’t
know
.”

“What have you told him?” Lloyd asked Emmett.

“Nothing but what he needs to know.”

“Goddamn it, how can you take a risk like this?”

Lloyd turned back to Roddy, who shrugged. Emmett was on his own on this one. Fay’s face drifted into Emmett’s consciousness like a full moon. Was the whole world going to kick him around? The blood rose in his throat.

“You keep telling me my job is to build a case,” he said hotly. “With no help from the city or the Feds. And with no one in county in the know. You think I’m going to do that with paper? There are no paper trails on this one, Lloyd, that’s the whole fucking point. If there’s a case here, it’s in the margins. What falls between the cracks. I got to roll up my sleeves, and I
can’t
do it by myself. I have to have someone who knows where the bodies are buried.”

Hands on his hips, Lloyd said, “OK, OK. Cool down.”

With a crash of thunder, the light blew out.

“Goddamn it, Emmett,” Lloyd said in the dark, “you’d better find this Barnes. Last thing we need is another dead nigger.” He made his way to the door. “We’ll finish this later,” he said.

He opened the door, and the steward’s flashlight lit up his craggy features. The steward led them around the reception desk, back to the lounge, and down a stairway at the rear of the bar. They made their way along a narrow passageway lined with crates of empty bottles, stacks of folded chairs, and gas canisters. Ahead was laughter and the sound of clinking glasses. The steward’s flashlight bounced along the whitewashed walls and exposed pipes. Roddy stumbled over a box and cursed. The air smelled of dust and damp.

They came to an open door, and the steward paused. Within was a flicker of light and a murmur of voices. Expecting the party, the men ducked inside.

Black faces stared across the empty space at them, tight mouths ghostly in candlelight. The room went silent. Lloyd cleared his throat. The steward stuck his head in and said, “Just colored in here, gentlemen. Follow me, please.”

They continued down the passageway until they reached a large room lit from the back by two Coleman lanterns hanging on the heating pipes. The atmosphere was loud and gay. Laura Hudson had bottles of champagne in both hands and was topping up glasses. Emmett could not see Fay. Or Peter Lawson.

Roddy and Lloyd melted into the crowd. As Emmett’s eyes searched the wide, low-ceilinged space, he saw the white staff working the room, Irish and Italians carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres and crustless sandwiches, bottles of wine and spirits. Pouring champagne was the ginger-haired kid who had waited the bar the day of Emmett’s meeting with Lloyd’s friends. The family name came to him. Garrity. His uncle had run liquor during Prohibition and now delivered beer for Anheuser-Busch. Used to drink with Emmett’s dad.

He floated around the room for ten minutes or so, not once seeing Fay. When the lights flickered back on, the crowd groaned with mock disapproval. The stewards snuffed the lanterns and herded everyone back upstairs. Emmett hung back, sick to his stomach.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Fay.

“Where have you been hiding?” she said.

He looked her over. Hair unruly, color high, lipstick freshly applied. Her eyes glittered with sexual energy.

“That’s funny,” he said, “I was about to ask the same of you.”

She drew in her lips and watched the retreating guests. “I’ve been enjoying myself,” she said.

“Yeah?

“Yes. For a change.”

She walked away and he followed her to the foot of the stairway. Beneath the smooth silk of her gown, her hips swung back and forth. Rage churned in his chest. She mounted the stairs. More than anything, he wanted to lean forward, grab her by the collar of her expensive dress, and drag her to the floor. But he stayed put, letting her move ahead without him.

He got his breathing under control. His nausea had left him. For the first time in years he wanted a drink. A real drink. He remained in the cool of the basement, happy to be alone.

But he was not. From down the hall came a low, mournful sound. A mix of voices singing something steady and lilting that was the exact opposite of the anger and confusion he felt around his heart. He stood stock still for a moment, listening. He could not make out the words – just the rolling rise and fall of the song. Pulled towards it, he moved down the hallway and came to the room where the Negro employees were riding out the storm. Where they had been herded so that Laura and her friends would not have to be near black men in the dark.

He edged in to the room. The people were in a circle, heads bowed, singing with their eyes closed and clapping lightly in time with the spiritual:

Nobody
knows
the
trouble
I’ve
seen

Nobody
knows
but
Jesus

Nobody
knows
the
trouble
I’ve
seen

Glory
Hallelujah
.

It was like Hattie singing in the kitchen, soft and soulful and from another world. He listened until they finished. They opened their eyes, saw him, and went stiff with fear and suspicion. He backed out of the room like a kid caught where he was not supposed to be, and made his way back to the ballroom.

17.

Satch was coming. It was for sure. Not to play with the Monarchs, like Jesse said, but to play against them. The greatest pitcher in the world had signed a contract with a mixed-race team in Bismarck, North Dakota. And the Bismarcks were coming to Kansas City.

Satchel Paige. Mannish boy. Upright and lowdown and born to wander. Coming to Municipal Stadium.

On Wardell’s bedroom wall was a photo of Satch from
Life
magazine. He was outside a poolroom in Harlem, sitting on the fender of a Buick Roadmaster. Dressed to kill in a pinstripe suit and two-toned leather shoes. About to light a cigarette and looking at the camera like he owned the world. Or a mighty piece of it, anyhow.

“You watch,” Jesse’s Uncle Josh said. “Two innings left, he’ll tell the outfield go sit down.”

“Infield, too,” Jesse added.

“Then, bang! Six strikeouts.”

Wardell and his mama were eating with Jesse’s family on their back porch. Arlene had to go to work after supper. Already she looked wore out.

“When’s this game?” she asked.

“Next Saturday. Quincy Johnson, he’s getting tickets for us.”

Jesse’s dad shook a rib bone at his brother. “Don’t be counting on stunts like that, Josh. Monarchs ain’t no exhibition team.”

“Listen to your daddy, Jesse. Local pride be messin’ with his judgement. We talkin’ ‘bout
Satch
.”

Jesse’s mother gave the men her Sunday frown. Same look she gave Josh when he showed his hip flask. “This North Dakota team,” she said.

“Yes, Alice?”

“The club is – am I right? – integrated.”

In
-
te
-
gra
-
ted
. She said the word like it was dangerous.

“Not a lot of colored folk up that direction,” Josh said, winking at Wardell. “Got to make do with lesser talent.”

Lester licked barbecue sauce from his fingers. He said to his wife, “Some doors are opening, honey. Thought you might welcome that.”

Alice stood, started clearing dishes. “All for open doors, I am. But open too quick and they liable to hit you in the face.”

Arlene said to Wardell, “Maybe going to this game isn’t such a good idea.”

“What?”

Shaking her head, Arlene followed Alice into the kitchen. His fingers still in the air, Lester glanced sideways at Wardell.

“What they worried about?” Josh said, low-toned.

“Oh, you know,” Lester said. “Where there’s white folk, there’s trouble.”

“Well, that may be so,” Josh said. “But she can’t be serious. Keep the boy at home? With Satch comin’?”

*

Before supper Wardell and Jesse had snuck out of the house and walked to Eighteenth and Vine. Arlene was cleaning at the Plaza and Alice was giving a music lesson. The boys hung outside Street’s Hotel, hoping to meet some of the ballplayers.

The corner was quiet in the afternoon heat. Under an awning at Fox’s Bar, four musicians played cards and drank beer. The boys sidled up.

“If it ain’t Alice’s kid,” one of the men said without looking up from his cards. “The one with the teeny-weeny pecker.”

The other men laughed.

“That ain’t true,” Jesse said.

“That a fact? You gonna prove us wrong, son?”

Jesse wiped his nose and sneered but said nothing. Wardell smelled something stronger than beer and stepped back.

“You Arlene’s boy?” another man said to Wardell.

“Yes sir.”

“How your mama doin’?”

“All right.”

“Who’s playing with her now?”

“Phineas,” said a fat man with a toothpick in his mouth. “Phineas Jordan.”

Cards flew back and forth.

“This Phineas, he play a little jelly roll?”

More laughter. On the street, two dogs were nosing each other’s privates.

“Eddie played, we know that.”

“Oh yeah.”

Squinting in the sun, Wardell glanced at a passing streetcar. The white driver gave him a nasty stare, and he looked away. Taped to the inside of the bar window was a photograph of Eddie Sloan, with black around the edges. The picture was all over the district. Eddie wore a collar and tie and a soft hat. Wardell tried to remember him from the days when he would visit. But he couldn’t line up his memory with the photo.

“Satchel Paige is coming to Kansas City,” Jesse said.

The fat man took the toothpick from his mouth and drank his beer. “When Jesus come again, boy, you feel free to let me know. Otherwise, we appreciate you let us get on with our game.”

The barkeep came to the door. He wore a white apron and had his sleeves rolled. He pointed at the boys. “You peanuts get movin’, you hear?”

*

That night Wardell’s mama carried him into the house from the taxi. He lay in bed and listened to her move around the kitchen. It was like part of his brain was in dreamland, but another part watching her.

She stayed up later every night. She wasn’t crying anymore, but sometimes there was no noise from the kitchen for a long time. Just when he thought she was in bed, he heard her walk across the plank floor or shift dishes in the sink.

Sometimes she brought him to her bed in the middle of the night. But she didn’t say the words she used to, the comforting things. Her body was still all soft and warm, but when she held him close, it was like she was thinking of something else. He wanted to ask her: is this how it’s going to be from now on?

On their way home from Jesse’s, he had told her that he wanted to see Satchel Paige pitch more than anything else in the world. She squeezed his hand and said nothing.

Tonight she didn’t come to his room. He woke after she was in bed. The locusts were loud as a buzzsaw. Moonlight poured into the room and turned the floor and the walls blue.

He stared at Satch’s picture. Everything about him was cool: the look in his eyes, the way he held his hands to light a cigarette, the hat tilted back on his head. If Wardell could see the man on the ballfield, all would be well. Satch would make things right. His hesitation wind-up, his screwball and whipsy-dipsy-do, his high-step kick. See him on the field and shout his name, like the old women shouted out the Lord’s in church. That would drive away the ghosts.

No doubt.

18.

Tension in the district was running high. Arlene could feel it. The weather stayed hot and folks stayed edgy. Storekeepers cleared the sidewalks of layabouts and country boys. Cops on the beat were quick with the bully club. Musicians and other night people peered over their shoulders.

Eddie’s picture remained in the windows of local businesses, and church and newspapers kept calling for the city to solve the murder. But Reverend Jones and Bill Carter tended to a parlor view of politics. A daytime outlook. Arlene knew that things were different on the street, especially after the sun went down.

You could push white folks only so far. Take this baseball game on Saturday. Eighteenth Street had bunting draped across the storefronts and pennants fluttering from the telephone poles. Chauncy Downes and his Rinky Dinks played hot tunes on a bandstand outside the Gem Theater. And the local boys were talking about whether Cool Papa Bell could get a hit off Satchel Paige or if Bullet Rogan would play. But underneath the holiday buzz was trouble. A lot of white people didn’t take to the idea of a mixed-race team playing in Kansas City. There were rumors of marches and pickets and extra police.

But the buzz got louder. The game was the social highlight of the year and everyone in the district was going. The saloons and gambling halls were roaring, and other businesses were closing for the day. Folks were coming from as far as Minneapolis. Cal Watkins had reserved a dozen seats on the third-base line, and Wardell and Jesse were like a couple of jumping beans. Even Alice was getting into the spirit. And Arlene wasn’t going to let her son go without her. So she claimed a ticket and thought about what to wear. Monarchs games were always a fashion parade.

Game day was glorious – warm, dry, breezy. The Bismarcks’ bus sat outside Street’s Hotel, surrounded by autograph hounds and overdressed young women. In the morning Arlene stood beside the bus with Wardell for an hour while he waited for Paige to show. He did not. They returned to Lester and Alice’s house for lunch and then headed to the stadium in a car laid on by Cal.

“Now this,” Lester said as they were driven along the riverfront, “is what I call traveling in
style
.”

“No riff-raff in here,” Josh said.

Alice said, “Glad to hear it.”

The women had spoken over lunch about the need for the district to show its better side at the game. White folks would be watching, and roughneck fans who drank corn liquor under the stands and cursed at the other team would be an embarrassment, even a danger.

Josh held to a different view. He was a heavyset man, with cheeks like a chipmunk, a grizzled mustache, and a scar on his chin from a long-ago brawl. All his life he had worked in a meat-packing plant in West Bottoms, where he was now a foreman, high as a colored man could go.

“Riff-raff and police,” Josh said. “It’s all the same.”

Lester said, “Police got the guns.”

Arlene didn’t like this turn in the talk. She had seen Josh nipping at the hip flask before getting into the car.

“Few of the boys drink a little bootleg,” Josh said, “and the womenfolk all upset. Meantime the police and who know who keep whalin’ on our ass.”

“
Josh
,” Alice said.

“And where’s all this reform I keep hearing about? All this bullshine about what Washington gon’ do for us colored? We can’t even apply for federal jobs.”

Lester glanced at the boys, sitting in the back between their mothers. “OK, Josh. That’s enough on that subject.”

*

The driver dropped them off at the entrance to the stadium. The place was hopping. Scalpers barked like carnies. The hotel women sashayed past men with teeth bright as cufflinks. Smells of grilled sausage, roasted nuts, cold beer. On top of the eastside wall was the Monarchs’ maroon flag with its gold-stitched legend – WORLD’S COLORED CHAMPIONS.

“Best baseball team in the world,” Josh said to the boys. “And Satch on the mound. What more could you ask for?”

In the parking lot were buses with license plates from Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In front of one bus, a quartet sang:

Is
you
is
or
is
you
ain’t
my
baby

The
way
you
acting
lately
makes
me
doubt

You
is
still
my
baby
,
baby
,
baby

Seems
my
flame
in
your
heart
done
gone
out

The good mood dipped as they approached the turnstiles and saw the protestors: women in dowdy frocks and men in short-sleeved shirts and straw hats. White, all of them, and middle-aged, holding hand-lettered signs that said
No
to
Integration
and
Races
Don’t
Mix
. The game crowd kept their distance, creating a no man’s land of hard-packed dirt littered with candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts where the police strolled, blue-black and slot-mouthed, their badges glinting in the sun.

Inside the park they met Leonora and Cal, who bought the boys scorecards and root beer. They made their way to their seats, five rows up from the dazzling infield. The grass was cut to perfection; the basepaths were smooth as a highway. A groundskeeper paced the white canvas fence bordering the outfield, checking the stakes and tightening the guylines.

“Gonna be a sell-out,” Lester said. “Eighteen thousand. At least.”

But his voice was strained.

“Look,” Josh said. “They got a rope up.”

The whole way round the ballpark, the police had roped off the first two rows of seats, where kids usually gathered to shout at the players and snare foul balls.

“They got a nerve,” Lester said.

“Check
this
out.”

The police detail filed onto the field, two abreast, and took up positions in front of the empty rows. In the cheap seats, country boys in overalls and low hats jeered.

“Since when the police been runnin’ Monarchs games?” Josh said. Hands on his hips, he hung his head like a bulldog. “Ain’t seen
nothin’
like this before.”

“Sit down, Josh,” Cal said.

Arlene made Wardell sit beside her and clasped his hand.

“It’s a shame, Cal,” Josh said.

“I know. But what are we going to do? Let’s just watch the game.”

Josh paced back and forth, glaring at the cops until Alice lost her patience and told him to stop being a fool, he was asking for trouble. As she spoke, the Monarchs sprinted from the home dugout and fanned onto the field. The crowd whistled and stomped. The players took their positions and went through their warm-ups. Several of the Bismarcks popped up from their dugout, jogging up and down the lines and tossing loosely in the bullpen. The fans rubbernecked, looking for Satch. But he was going to make them wait.

He stayed out of sight until the bottom of the first. Two hits for the visitors in the top half of the inning but no runs. When a double play retired the side, the crowd held its breath. The sky expanded and the infield grass brightened. For a minute the police seemed to disappear. After a long wait Satch emerged from the dugout, loose-limbed and game-faced, tugging the bill of his cap as he made his way to the mound. The crowd erupted in a huge cheer. He slapped his leg with his mitt and looked at the sky, ignoring the uproar. All eyes on the man. The beanpole frame. The freakishly long arms. Even the cops had turned around to look.

Arlene watched Wardell. He sat bolt upright, eyes fixed on his hero, right hand softly socking the palm of his mitt. Satch tossed his first warm-up. It popped in the catcher’s glove like the snap of a bull whip, and Wardell gasped. When Satch scuffed the mound and tossed the rosin bag behind him, Wardell’s lips parted with a soundless cheer. When he smoked the first batter on three pitches – Newt Allen, Cal said, shaking his head, Newt Allen struck out looking – Wardell laughed. Drunk, the boy sounded. Leroy Taylor managed to foul off a couple pitches, but he too fanned. And when the third batter, Big Bomb Brown, struck out swinging, Wardell rose from his seat, leaned forward and, as Satch strutted back to the dugout with his finger pointed at the sky, held his opened mitt out as if asking his hero to fire one his way.

Arlene thought of Spencer, husband and second-baseman, who should have been here, beside his boy. Who last shared her bed seven years ago. Then Eddie, who had always said that baseball was like jazz. Her men, taken by the world. Who was going to stop Wardell from being taken? A ballplayer?

Satch pitched perfect but was pulled after four innings, the better to rest his arm for the Bismarcks’ next barnstorming stop. So Monarchs fans got all they wished for – Satch in full flow
and
a victory, 3-2 when Bullet Rogan smacked a two-run homer in the ninth. In the euphoria that followed, Arlene lost her grip on Wardell. Hemmed in by the surging crowd, she felt him wriggle away and cried out so sharply that Cal put his arm around her shoulders and told her that he and Jesse were only going to the locker room door to get Satch’s autograph. Josh would be with them.

As they made their way to the exit, a drunk in his hog-killing clothes somehow slipped past the police cordon and capered onto the field, shouting and waving a crushed hat. Two cops chased him, but he dodged their tackles and ran across the infield, where he stopped near the pitcher’s mound, hooting and breathless. The boys in the cheap seats cheered. The cops caught up with him and their billyclubs flew high, coming down on his bare head with a crack. Arlene’s stomach turned at the sound. The departing crowd paused as one, saw the man slump to the grass, and then pushed hard for the exits.

The smell of blood was in the air, of bad liquor and adrenaline. The boys in the bleachers lingered, scowling at the gathered cops, who were bunched together in the infield, batons raised. Arlene’s blood beat in her ears. Wardell, she had to find Wardell.

An empty bottle flew from the bleachers. Then a piece of two-by-four. The grumbling turned to shouting, more bottles flew, and the cops rushed the seats. There was mayhem. Yelling. Crashing. Gunfire. Arlene clawed desperately at the people in front of her. Clawed as if buried alive.

Outside the ballpark was chaos. Men with bloody hands and faces dragged others too broken up to walk, laying them along the sidewalk. Alice and Leonora went over to help. Men were taking off their shirts and ripping them into strips for bandages. Monarch cabs appeared from the 22nd Street rank to take the injured to the hospital.

Arlene ran up and down the stretch of boardwalk in front of the ticket windows, shouting Wardell’s name. Lester chased her and grabbed her arm. “Arlene, come over here. With us.”

“
Wardell
.”

“Don’t worry. Josh is with him. Come on over now.”

After a few minutes Jesse emerged from the mob. Josh followed, pale and limping, his jacket torn.

“Where’s Wardell?” Arlene said.

Josh looked confused. His face was the color of wet ashes. “He isn’t with you?”

“Oh my God, Cal, where is he? Where’s my baby?”

Cal held her. He spoke in low tones to Josh. Lester was on his tiptoes, peering through the smoke. Beyond the fleeing fans and injured bodies were knots of tense white men, hefting weapons of all descriptions.

“Wardell!” Arlene shouted.

“He said he was going back to you,” Josh said. “I told him stop, but he kept going.”

Arlene broke from Cal and ran to the west entrance. A man with a shotgun stood in front of the turnstile. He had a brutal mouth and a cast to his eye.

“My boy’s in there.”

The man spat at her feet and hitched at the gun.

“I said, my son’s in there.”

“Well, that’s his funeral, ain’t it?”

“He’s a child. I have to get him out.”

His stray eye made it hard to tell where he was looking. She moved to pass him, and he barred her way. His breath was sour and metallic.

“I have to – ”

He struck her in the breast with the gunstock. She staggered back and fell to the dust. He looked at her as at a wounded animal. Cal and Lester, who had followed her over, helped her up.

“
Wardell
!” she cried.

“You boys better get that bitch out of here right quick.”

Cal was breathing hard and his face was dark. “I want to speak to the man in charge,” he said to the guard.

“You
what
?”

“Who’s heading up this operation?”

“Listen to me, you dumb nigger,
I’m
the man in charge.”

Cal tried to grab the gun but slipped and fell to the ground. The man stepped on Cal’s hand and aimed the shotgun at his head. The women screamed.