The House of Daniel (35 page)

Fidgety Frank kept the Falcons off balance, and we figured out what their pitcher had. I doubled and scored a run myself. I always felt good when I helped out with the bat, because I didn't do it as often as I wanted to. I was fine in the outfield, but you've got to hit some. So I was extra happy every time I got good wood on the ball.

We ended up beating them 7-1. Sometimes, you win by a score like that and you think
I dunno. They'd be trouble if we played 'em again
. It felt as though we could take the Grand Junction Falcons any time we pleased. That may not have been so, but it felt that way.

We didn't let on. When we came in after we got the last out, we waved our caps to the crowd again. They gave us another nice hand. The Falcons wanted to take us out to supper. They wanted to hear about the tournament—and about the zombies.

“Go if you want to,” Harv told us. “I got to find me a telephone and see what we can do about fixing our schedule. If those doggone zombies weren't already dead, I'd want to kill 'em for fouling us up like this.”

So after we all showered and changed, the Falcons took us to what they said was the best place in Grand Junction. It was pretty good, all right. They served big slabs of dead cow cooked just the way you wanted it, with baked potatoes or mashed potatoes or French fries on the side. Hard to go wrong with a menu like that, especially when the beer was on tap.

Some of the Falcons had played against Carpetbag when he came through the town with one barnstorming team or another. “No wonder you guys beat the Crawdads if you had him on the hill,” one of them said. “That guy's murder.”

“Hey, Fidgety Frank won a game against them, too, remember.” I'd drunk enough beer to get talkier than usual.

When my mug got empty again, the cute little blond gal taking care of us gave me back my dime. “He already paid me,” she said, nodding Frank's way.

I couldn't buy my own beer the rest of the night, it turned out. So I started buying Fidgety Frank's instead, to even things out a bit. He hadn't wanted to remind the Falcons he'd had something to do with the House of Daniel's hoisting the trophy. I wouldn't have guessed he was so modest, but there you are.

But they were more interested in the riots than in the baseball. They knew about baseball. The whole zombie business, though, that rocked them. “I took a magic class at Mesa State here,” one of them said. “The prof said zombies couldn't go off the rails like that.”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,'” Azariah said. Where Harv talked Book of Daniel talk, he came out with Shakespeare. I didn't know he had it in him, not till then. All on his own, he added, “More things than are in your prof's philosophy, too.”

“I guess so,” the Falcon said. “Maybe the vampires know things Professor Houlihan didn't.”

“Wouldn't surprise me one bit.” That was Wes. If anybody was always ready to believe people were dumber than they thought, he was your man.

What surprised me was how little
we
knew about what all had happened in Denver, happened to Denver. We'd lived through it. If we didn't know, who did? Who could? But all we knew was our own little bit, plus what we saw when we drove through there early that morning. And we were too busy trying to stay alive to take a lot of notes.

Makes you wonder how anybody ever finds out anything about what happened a long time ago, or even day before yesterday. How can you tell? Even if you're sure your memory's perfect, wouldn't somebody else call you a lying fool and be just as sure about something completely different? You'd have to put together dozens of people's stories, wouldn't you, to have any idea of what really went on? Even then, it wouldn't be a neat jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces wouldn't quite fit no matter how you pushed them around. Others would stick out over the edges.

What
is
history, then? Whatever enough people say history is, that's what. If they make you believe their story, then it's true for you.

Enough. Too much, I bet. The Falcons took us back to Lincoln Park. We'd said we'd meet up with Harv there. He was sitting in the bus waiting for us and smiling like Santa Claus. “Well, boys,” he said, “I know where we're going.”

“Where?” Fidgety Frank sounded worried. Harv looked too cheerful for his own good, and maybe for ours.

“Salt Lake City tomorrow,” he answered. “Go to bed early tonight, everybody. We'll be up early tomorrow. We've got a long trip ahead of us.”

*   *   *

We had to get through one more roadblock before we could head on toward Salt Lake City. This one was just on the Utah side of the border with Colorado. The cops in charge of it were just as jumpy as any of the farmers with shotguns a lot closer to Denver.

“We don't want any of them zombie things sneaking into our state out of Colorado,” one of them said.

I wondered how many were already in Utah, working in mines and factories and other places where all you needed was stupid muscle. Every one of them saved some boss the expense of paying a live man's wages. The accountants with the glasses and the green eyeshades had to love them.

They had to love them till the zombies rose up and started slaughtering people, anyhow. That would put some red ink in your books in a hurry.

We stopped in Price, Utah, about seventy-five miles this side of Salt Lake City, for gas and a stretch. Price was a coal town. Some of the dust there was black from the mines. Some was red from the desert we'd been driving through. Desert and mountains, mountains and desert—we didn't seem to do anything else. It was all pretty country, but too rugged for me to want to live there.

Now the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats around it, that was something to see. Harv was practically cackling when he drove past Lehi and Provo on the last lap toward Salt Lake City. “We are going to make money like bandits in these parts,” he said. “Like bandits, I tell you!”

“You mean we carry guns instead of bats?” Wes always tried to let the air out of Harv's imagination.

“Shut your face.” Harv wasn't gonna let anybody rain on his parade. “Do you know where the closest pro teams west of here are at? In the Coast League, that's where! In California—well, Oregon and Washington, too. From here to there, semipro's the best ball folks can watch. And who's the best semipro team around?”

“We are!” we all chorused. And we were, too. We'd proved it in Denver. Fewer people knew we'd won the
Post
's tournament than they should have. Other headlines came out of Denver instead. But that didn't make winning it any less real.

“Right!” Harv nodded, luckily without turning his head. “The Coast League was in Salt Lake for a while, but then they pulled back to the coast. Town didn't draw well enough to suit their Majesties.”

Harv sounded snottier and less charitable than usual. I think he was jealous. The Pacific Coast League is Class AA ball, only one level shy of the bigs. And because they are way out there on the West Coast, they get to do as they please more than any other minor league. They think of themselves as just about a big league, and maybe they aren't so far wrong.

After that, Salt Lake City was in the Utah–Idaho League, in Class C, for two or three years. But it went under, so no pro ball was left around there any more. They had what they called the Utah Industrial League. In fact, we were playing the Salt Lake City Industries, the local team that had gone to Denver.

Salt Lake City was bigger than I expected, bigger not just for number of folks but for size, too. The blocks were long and the streets were wide. It spread out; there weren't many tall buildings.

That meant you could see the State Capitol from a long way off. The Mormon Temple, too, with the gold angel on the spire. I didn't know much about the Mormons then. Come to that, I still don't. I wondered whether Harv was jealous in a different way, though. Utah made me think of what the House of Daniel might be like if it had a whole state to play with, not just part of a small town in Wisconsin.

From the little bits I did find out, a lot of what I think the Mormons believe seems pretty silly. But whatever they believe, they mostly turn out nice people. Which counts for more? You'll have to decide that for yourself.

Bonneville Park probably held about as many people as Merchants Park had. But when they built Merchants Park, they at least remembered they were high up and made you hit the ball a long way before it went over the wall. Salt Lake City's about a thousand feet lower than Denver, but Bonneville Park would've been a hitters' heaven at sea level … or below it.

Left was 308; right went 320. And out to dead center? Only 360. The fences were at least twenty feet high—I will say that. Advertising signs, some fresh but more old and faded and peeling, covered them.

Wes shook his head when he looked out there. He'd pitch today, and he was as thrilled as you'd think. “I always try to forget ballparks like this,” he said. “Somehow, they keep coming back to haunt me.”

“Their guy has to pitch here, too,” I reminded him.

“If he's a Mormon, he can't even drink afterwards, the poor son of a bitch,” Wes said. “What'll you do out there? I don't need a center fielder—I need another second baseman.”

One thing I will say is, the fans enjoy an 11-9 game more than one that ends 1-0. They want to see the ball flying around and the runners scurrying every which way. A pitchers' duel may be more interesting to play in, but not for the folks who shove quarters at the ticket-sellers.

Oh—I did find out how come the Industries had bees on their sleeves. To the Mormons, the bee stands for industry. The Salt Lake City PCL team was called the Bees, as a matter of fact.

We got the same kind of introduction and the same kind of big hand at the start of the game as we had in Grand Junction. One of the Industries said to me, “We were lucky to get out when we did, but I wish we'd been playing against you in the finals.”

“I know what you mean. You always want to do as well as you can,” I answered. He nodded.

When the Industries ran out to take the field, the crowd cheered them even louder than it had for us. Well, they were the town team, so that was all right. Getting hands on the road felt funny anyhow.

And the game was … what I thought it would be as soon as I got a look at that silly center field. Ordinary fly balls zoomed over the fence. When they didn't go over it, they banged off it. Wes hadn't been kidding about wanting a second baseman in center. The Industries' shortstop ran out and got a ball that caromed back over the left fielder's head. He grabbed it so fast, Eddie had to jam on the brakes and scamper back to first. The short fences gave bases, but sometimes they took them away, too.

Never a dull moment out there, and that's an understatement. I could state some other things, but I won't. When the smoke cleared away and the dust finally settled, we ended up on top, 13-10. Not a tidy way to win a ballgame, but you take what you can get.

“Beat 'em by a field goal,” I said to Eddie when we went in after the last out.

“I wouldn't have minded a football helmet today,” he said. “All those balls coming and going … I thought I was in the middle of a shooting gallery.” He ducked, as though another line drive whizzed past him.

“Scary out there,” I agreed.

Some of the Industries came over and told us what a good game it was. Mormons are polite and friendly. They work hard at it. It gets annoying every once in a while, but only every once in a while.

I nodded to the guy who'd talked to me before we played. “This park must drive you nuts,” I said.

“Only if you're a pitcher,” he answered. “To me, it feels like the happy hunting ground.”

“I guess it would.” If I played all my home games in Bonneville Park, I'd start thinking I was a power hitter. That's the kind of place it was.

We had a hotel in Salt Lake City. One step up from a boarding house, though Harv said it didn't cost any more. On the way there, we passed two different soup-kitchen lines, one at some government kitchen and one at a Mormon church. They did try hard to fight the mess that had the whole country wrapped up in spider webs. But when there aren't enough jobs for the people who need 'em, what can you do? Keep folks from starving—that's about it.

The main way the hotel was different from a boarding house was, the rooms had a bathroom with a toilet and tub. We didn't need to go down to the end of the hall to clean up. I liked that. I wished we'd live it up more often. If it was the same price, why not? But most of the time it wasn't. And Harv was a great man for tossing nickels around like manhole covers.

That was a terrific way for a fella who ran a semipro team to be. The guys who played on the team? Maybe they didn't enjoy it quite so much.

*   *   *

After we went over and up to Salt Lake City, we went partway back down to Provo. It's about fifty miles south of the bigger city. Would've been better if we could've played there before we went up to Salt Lake, but it didn't work out like that. Harv was still untangling the knots the Great Zombie Riots tied in our travel plans.

Provo's the home of BYU, the Mormons' college. There's a big Y on a mountain east of town that the students whitewash every year. Nobody on the bus got real excited when Harv told us about it, though. I don't think any of us had taken college classes. Some of us went to high school, but I don't think many came away with a sheepskin.

There was more to Provo than the college. We played the Timps at Timpanogos Park. They belonged to the Utah Industrial League. I expect the name of the ballpark gave them their own handle. It was a fine place to play in, especially for a town that never had a pro team. The stands held 2,500, maybe 3,000 people. The outfield was a lot bigger than the one at Bonneville Park. That would warm the cockles of Fidgety Frank's heart.