The House of Daniel (2 page)

“That's good. That's better'n good, in fact. Wouldn't want you for this if you were his buddy. I did somethin' for him—never mind what—and now he won't give me what he owes. So what I want is, I want you to rough up his kid brother in Ponca City.” Big Stu scowled. “I had to put out a geas to find he had a brother there at all. But I did it.” He looked proud of himself then, like a moss-covered snapping turtle soaking up sun on a rock.

“You never sent me out for strongarm stuff before,” I said slowly, which was … close to true, anyway.

He looked at me. He looked into me. He could see more dark places inside my head than even I knew were there. His mouth twisted. A snapper's mouth doesn't work that way, but seeing him would make you think it did. “Hell, Jack, a hundred bucks.”

I was still pretty green some ways. I didn't know I was dickering. He did, or figured he did, which amounted to the same thing. And when he came out with
a hundred bucks
, why, my conscience spread its wings and flew away. “You're on,” I heard myself say. “What's his name? Where do I find him?”

Big Stu didn't so much as smile. In his way, he was good. “He lives in a boarding house on Palm Street, not far from the city swimming pool. His name's Mitch.” He reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. He held it out for me to take. “Here's the address.”

I had to unfold it. The pencil scrawl read
527 Palm #13
. I gave my best try at a tough-guy chuckle. “Lucky number,” I said.

“Lucky for you,” he answered. “He opens the door, you clobber him good before he knows what's what. Then go to town from there. And then head on over to Conoco Ball Park and get yourself a coupla the other kind of hits.” He laughed.

Well, so did I. I'm not what you'd call proud to admit it, but I did. “I'll do that.”

Big Stu reached into a different pocket, the one where his billfold lived. He handed me a sawbuck. “Here. Down payment, like. Buy yourself some groceries so Lil don't ruin my business trying to fatten you up.”

How did he know? Part of his business was knowing things. The door to the back room was shut till I walked through it. So what? He knew anyhow.

I got out of there. The sawbuck felt funny in my pocket. Heavy. Not just a printed piece of paper. Heavy as blood, maybe. What else was it but blood money?

Then I went back to the saloons by the flour mill. No, not to drink up my dividend. I like it fine, thank you, but I hold the bottle. It doesn't hold me. I was looking for some of the other Eagles, to let 'em know I'd be going over to Ponca City a day early by my lonesome.

Second place I stuck my nose into, there was Ace McGinty, our number two pitcher. He had two, three empty schooners in front of him, and a full one. You got to work to get plastered on 3.2 beer. Ace, he was working. I told him what I needed to tell him. A slow grin spread across his face. “She must be pretty,” he said, and breathed fumes into my face. His hands shaped an hourglass in the air between us.

If he wanted to think that, fine. Then he wouldn't think about Big Stu. I told a few lies—you know the kind I mean. That grin got wider on his country-boy mug. He smelled like a brewery. I think he'd be our ace for real if he didn't drink so much. I had to hope he'd recall my news.

A blue jay on the chain-link fence around the mill screeched at me when I came out. Behind the fence, that damn zombie—or maybe it was another one; I don't know—was rolling a barrel of flour to a truck. He wasn't going real fast, but he was going. He'd keep going all night long, too. Why not? It wasn't like he'd get tired. Or hungry.

I was getting hungry. Back at the shack I had half a loaf of bread going stale and some beans I could boil up. I'll never make a cook, not if I live to be a hundred. So I headed to Big Stu's again, to spend his money in his joint. I don't know if the barbecue is as good as the stew, but it's plenty good enough.

“Live here, do you?” Lil said.

I kind of grunted and let that one alone. It's one of those jokes that would be funny if only it were funny, you know? Big Stu's was an awful lot nicer than were I did live. If it had a bed, I wouldn't've half minded staying there all the time. Then he could've found even more ways to land me in trouble.

I ate up the barbecue. Since I had that ten-spot and the promise of more, I ate a slice of apple pie with cheese on top, too. I left Lil a dime for a tip—when I've got money, nobody can call me a cheapskate. By that time, it was getting dark outside. I let out a long, long sigh, got up, and went on home.

*   *   *

Be it ever so humble … I know you've heard the old chestnut. You want to know what I think, that's a pile of crap, too. If somebody'd burned down the shack I lived in, he would've done me a favor.

It was on the outskirts of Enid, where the town turns into farm country without quite knowing it's doing that. My pa, he lit out for California year before last. A carpet came by heading west, he hopped on, and he was out of there. He took all the money in the place, too. Seven dollars and some-odd cents, I think it was.

Can't say I miss him much. We didn't get along while he was here, which is putting it mildly. No note or anything to tell me where he'd gone—he doesn't have his letters. The old lady across the street let me know the next day. I was doing something or other for Big Stu, so I wasn't around when he hightailed it.

Hell, if I had been I might've gone with him. Then this'd be a different story. I can't say how, but different for sure.

It'd be a different story if my ma were still around, too. I just barely remember her. I was five, I guess, and I was all excited on account of I was gonna have a new baby brother or sister. He would've been a brother if he'd lived. That's what Pa told me. Only he didn't, and neither did Ma.

So it was Pa and me, and then it was only me. I went back to the place to sleep, and to eat when I couldn't afford Big Stu's or one of the other joints, and that was about it. Some guys on their own make pretty fair housekeepers. Not me. Pa used to say I could burn water when I boiled it. I won't tell you he was wrong, exactly, but I will say he was one to talk.

When I got inside, I lit a kerosene lantern. That let me find my beat-up old cardboard suitcase. It's longer and thinner than most, so it'll hold a couple-three bats. I put them in—two Louisville Sluggers, one Adirondack—and my spikes and my glove, and the gray flannel uniform with ENID EAGLES across the shirtfront in red fancy letters. Then I put in some ordinary clothes, too.

And, since I was supposed to send this Mitch Carstairs a message, I dropped a blackjack and some brass knucks into the suitcase. Big Stu's plan looked pretty good to me—get in the first lick and make it count. They'd help. Where'd I get 'em? You do things for Big Stu, you get stuff like that, just in case. I hadn't used 'em much before, but I had 'em.

Across the road, the old gal who'd told me Pa'd headed west had the radio on so loud I could hear Amos 'n' Andy inside my place. She's deaf as a brick. She had power in her house, though. We never did. If we had, they would've shut it off 'cause we couldn't pay the bill.

Power. I laughed, not that that was real funny, either. With any kind of power, I would've been good enough to play pro ball, maybe claw my way up to the bigs, even. I can run. I can catch. I can throw. You play center field, you've got to be able to do those things. But my hitting's on the puny side. Always has been, dammit. I went to a tryout for the Dallas Steers once. Soon as they saw me with a bat in my hands, they said, “Sorry, sonny,” patted me on the head, and sent me on my way. They reckoned they could find better.

Worst of it is, they were right.

After I packed, I didn't have a thing to do till I caught the bus for Ponca City the next morning. I carried the lantern into my room, blew it out, and went to bed. I could still hear Amos 'n' Andy from across the street. I didn't care. With a full belly and a little cash, I didn't care about anything, no more than a dog would. You're poor enough, life gets pretty simple.

*   *   *

I ate stale bread for breakfast instead of coughing up another quarter at the diner. Then I lugged my sorry suitcase to the Red Ball Bus Lines station on East Maple. The bus wouldn't set out for another hour and a half after I got there, but I could do nothing at the station as well as I could at home.

Better, even. They set out newspapers in the waiting room—today's
Enid Morning News
and the
Tulsa Tribune
from day before yesterday. Pa didn't know how to read and write, but I do. I'm glad I do. It's handy and it kills time, both. I grabbed the
Tribune
. It had a funny page, and the
Morning News
didn't.

The hour and a half turned into two and a half—the bus came late. I was ticked but not surprised; Red Ball did things like that. The
Tribune
had a story about a king—or maybe he was just a minister—way on the other side of the ocean who promised he'd make everything run on time. Big Stu would've bet against him, I expect.

A guy who looked like a drummer and another one who looked like he'd maybe be a werewolf at full-moon time got off the bus when it finally did chug in. Me and a colored fella, we climbed on. He went to the back. I sat a couple of rows behind the driver. The bus wasn't anywhere close to crowded.

For twenty miles north from Enid, US 81 and US 60 are the same road. Then 81 goes north into Kansas; 60 swings east. The road wasn't close to crowded, either. A few trucks, a few flivvers, us. A few carpets overhead. Costs about the same to ship by magic or by wheels. If it didn't, one would run the other out of business.

Kids played baseball in the fields by the highway. A lot of 'em should've been in school, but they played anyhow. I never did any such thing—and if you buy that, I'll tell you another one. White kids, colored kids, Injun kids, they all just played, together and separate. They'd sort out the rules of how things worked when they got bigger. I must've seen half a dozen games by the time 60 forked off 81. There's Pond Creek and Lamont—little, no-account places—and then, eventually, there's Ponca City. It's about sixty miles from Enid. It only felt like forever 'cause the bus went so slow and stopped at every other farmhouse, seemed like.

Halfway between Pond Creek and Lamont, it stopped in the middle of nowhere. Driver said something that made a lady cluck like a laying hen. I leaned out into the aisle to look through the windshield. A load of rocks was spilled across the highway, and a carpet down beside it on the verge. The only way the wizard on that carpet could've looked glummer was if the rocks had smashed a car and the folks in it. Drunk or just sloppy, he'd fouled up his spell some kind of way.

We wouldn't make it to Ponca City or even Lamont till those rocks got cleared. We all piled out of the bus—even the lady who'd clucked—and started shoving. The unhappy wizard helped some, too. So did a family in a Hupmobile. A couple of farmers brought their mules.

The clucking lady wagged a finger in the wizard's face. “Your company will pay for this!” she said, all angry.

“I am my company,” he answered.

“Then you will,” she said, which sure didn't turn him any more cheerful.

I wasn't what you'd call happy, either. I muttered some ungodly things while I hauled rocks. Just what I'd need, to mash a foot so I couldn't run or smash a finger so I couldn't throw or hold a bat—or swing a good right at Mitch Carstairs.

But my luck stayed in. I didn't hurt myself; I didn't even rip my pants. We finally cleared a path wide enough for the bus to sneak through. The passengers climbed aboard. The family got back into their car. The farmers took the mules away. And the damnfool wizard just sat there on his carpet with his head in his hands like he'd dropped the last out in the bottom of the ninth and cost his team the game. I know that feeling—I wish I didn't. It's not a good one.

We left Enid late. We had trouble on the road. So we got to the Ponca City bus station later than late. One guy in there waiting for the bus. Oh, he was hopping mad! He cussed worse'n I did shifting those rocks, and a lot louder. It didn't do him any good, mind, but he was too steamed to care.

I carried my suitcase to the roominghouse where the Eagles stay when they come to Ponca City. It was only a few blocks from the one where Charlie Carstairs's kid brother was staying, so that was handy. I'd made up some song and dance about why I was in town a day ahead of the rest of the team, but I turned out not to need it. Soon as the landlady—widow woman—saw who I was, she nodded and said, “Heard you were comin' early. I'll put you in Seven tonight.”

Heard from who?
I wondered. But I didn't need to be Hercule Sherlock or whatever his name is to cipher that out. Big Stu knows folks all over Oklahoma—into Kansas and Texas and maybe Arkansas, too. One of 'em must've put a flea in her ear.

Room 7 was a lot less crowded than it would be with four or five of us in there like usual. I picked the bed with the mattress that was less swaybacked. With luck, I'd get to keep it—well, half of it—when the rest of the Eagles came up from Enid.

You stay at a rooming house, you have supper with the rest of the lodgers. That's part of the bill. Not a fancy supper, or they'd charge more. I wasn't fancy. Where else would I go? Ponca City didn't have a diner anywhere near as good as Big Stu's. One of the gals at the table—a secretary or something, I guessed—looked nice. Not
I want to run off to the Sandwich Islands with you, sweetie
nice, but enough to keep my mind off the pinto-bean soup and tinned peas boiled all gray.

She didn't even notice me—she had eyes for one of the other fellows. So I finished eating, I put my dishes in the sink like a good boy, and I went back to my room. Nothing much to do in there, so I did nothing for a while. Not like I didn't have practice doing nothing back at the shack.