The House of Daniel (40 page)

We had a better house the next day against the Bohemian Brewers. Their manager was a tall, skinny guy they called Sad Slim Smith. He looked the part; if you asked his face, it would've told you he was watching his house burn down with his family inside.

We brought Fidgety Frank out there, and the Brewers threw another southpaw at us. In Nat Park, lefties made sense. They were better against power hitters who swung from the left side, and those were the guys who could do you in there.

I wanted to see whether Frank could give us another good outing after the start in Lewiston. I'm sure Harv wanted the same thing even more than I did. Come to that, I'm sure Frank did, too. We got a couple of runs. So did they, on a long home run. Fidgety Frank didn't put that pitch where he wanted to, but anybody'll make a mistake now and then. Even Carpetbag did. What mattered was how long you put between
now
and
then
.

I singled up the middle to lead off the fifth. Then I lit out for second. Back in the day, everybody ran all the time. It's more a power game now. The steal catches the other guys napping. And it did that time. The throw from behind the plate came in way late.

Fidgety Frank flared a Texas Leaguer over the shortstop's head. I saw right away it would drop, so I was running almost from the crack of the bat. I scored standing up. Then the top of our order chewed up the Brewers' lefty. We came out of the fifth with a 7-2 lead. And Frank held on to it. We won that one going away, 9-3.

The Brewers were good sports about it. In fact, they'd brought along a few cases of what they turned out at work. Most of us—not all, but most—were ready to help turn 'em into cases of empties. I don't think anybody except maybe Wes got smashed, but we got happy for sure.

“How come a city this big doesn't have a pro team?” I asked Sad Slim Smith.

“On account of the minors say Nat Park's too rundown to play in,” he answered … sadly. “Our team in the Pacific Coast International League pegged out fourteen, fifteen years ago, and nobody's wanted us back since.” He gulped from a bottle; I hadn't realized what a nerve I'd touched. “It's better for guys like us. We draw more than we would with a pro team in town. But still … If they built a ballpark that didn't look like a shantytown reject, we'd get a club in nothin' flat.”

Inland Motor Freight the next day. They wore IMF in big red letters on their shirts, and on their caps, too. When they went through their paces before the game, they didn't look any better than the Bakers or the Brewers. But they hit Wes as though they knew Amos's signs before he set 'em down. Maybe they had somebody peeking through a gap in the fence with field glasses. Things like that do happen. Maybe they just got lucky. Or maybe Wes was still hurting from the beer he'd put down the night before. No, he hadn't been shy about it.

Whatever the reason, they beat us 7-4. Harv fussed and fumed and carried on. He sounded as ticked off as anybody could without cussing up a storm. “Consarn it, I wanted to get outta here with a sweep,” he growled inside our tiny little mildewed dressing room. “We shoulda done it, too.” He took a deep breath. “Wes…”

“Yeah, Harv?” Wes sounded quieter than usual. He knew what was coming.

And it came. “Don't get plowed before you're gonna pitch, all right? Anybody could see you were still feeling it out there.”

“Sorry, Harv.” Wes looked like a schoolboy getting it from the principal. Well, as much like that as a long-haired, bearded guy with his shirt off and his hairy chest sticking out can look. Your schoolboy probably won't stink of sweat and liniment, either.

“Fudge!” Harv said. I'd never heard that one from him before. It sounded fierce.

“Oh, take it easy, Harv. So they got a win. We still took two outta three,” Fidgety Frank said. He could afford to talk—he'd won his game in Spokane. He went on, “They'll want us back next year, and they'll all have something to shoot for.”

“Something to shoot at, you mean. Us. Fudge!” Harv wasn't buying it, not even for a minute.

*   *   *

I enjoyed staying in Spokane. First time since the Great Zombie Riots wound down that we'd stayed anywhere longer than a day. First time since then that we'd just taken the bus to get to the ballpark. I liked relaxing that tiny bit. I could do the kind of traveling the House of Daniel had to do, but it wore on me. Some people liked it. Wes did, I think, and I'm sure about Harv. It drove others crazy. If they ever got on the bus, they didn't stay. I was kind of in between.

We rolled out of Spokane heading west on US 10. More of that fine, fine wheat country, with apple and pear orchards mixed in. After about sixty miles, at a little town called Wilbur, the highway swung from west to southwest. We went northwest instead, up a smaller road.

Our next game was at a place called Mason City—almost as often as not, they called it Electric City. The Mason City Beavers were another semipro team that played its regular games in the Idaho–Washington League.

Mason City was a company town, like Madrid, New Mexico. Only they weren't miners there. They were working on the Coulee Dam across the Columbia. When they got done, if they ever did, they said it'd be the biggest man-made thing in the whole world. When they said Coulee, I thought they meant Coolie. So I was surprised at first when I didn't see any Chinamen in Mason City.

But I knew—I mean, I knew for sure—how come they called their team the Beavers. After all, what else do beavers do but…?

You could tell Mason City was a company town just by looking at it. All the houses were built to the same pattern. They were all painted white. They didn't seem like bad houses—don't get me wrong. But you had to do things the company way. Back when they made flivvers, you could get one painted whatever color you wanted, as long as you wanted black. It was like that.

After a while, Ford had to paint cars other colors or go under. Too many other people made cars, too. If you worked for a company that made dams, you had less choice.

When I first saw Mason City, I thought it was too small to let us get much of a crowd. But the place was baseball-crazy. They loved their Beavers. And Coulee City was only a mile away. That was the town where the engineers and the wizards working on the dam lived. They were talking about getting up their own team, but they hadn't done it yet. In the meantime, they pulled for the Beavers.

Mason City Ballpark was as neat and orderly as the rest of the town. It was made from concrete and steel, not wood. They were putting so much concrete and steel into the dam, I bet they didn't even notice a ballpark's worth. It was 335 down each line, 380 to left-center and right-center, and 405 in straightaway center. Like I said, neat and orderly. If it was less interesting than a lot of playing fields I've seen, the company likely didn't care.

The Beavers' pitcher fit the park to a T. He was a fastball, curveball, changeup guy who couldn't blow it past you but hit his spots. We nicked him for a run in the first, one in the third, one more in the fourth.

Meanwhile, Fidgety Frank mowed 'em down. With the herky-jerky windup and the leg kick and the waggle, he seemed as though he belonged in a tumbledown wreck of a place like Nat Park. But the Beavers couldn't solve him. They were out in front on his changeups, late when he came in with the heat.

Their crowd got quiet. Little by little, they saw how well we played even if we looked funny. The only thing wrong with the stands was, they didn't hold enough people. Official capacity was 1,500. They sold standing room for us, but we could've drawn more than we did if the park would've held 'em.

They batted for their pitcher in the bottom of the seventh. I don't know whether the guy they brought in had a tired arm or was just no good, but we hit him hard. It had been 3-1. It ended up 8-2.

They were good losers. We and the Beavers all ate supper at the company cafeteria, and the company sprang for our food. I had a pork chop with stewed apples on top, mashed potatoes, and peach pie. It was better than what the coal-mining outfit dished out down in Madrid.

They lodged us overnight, too. Harv was happy about that. It partway made up for the smaller crowd. The rooms were … rooms. They were newer and cleaner than a lot of the places we stayed at, but I've lain down on plenty of mattresses that made my back happier.

They fed us breakfast, too. That was nice of them. A plump fellow in an expensive suit said, “You fellas may look … different, but you sure can show people how to play the game.” He meant
may look weird
, of course, but he did manage not to come out with it.

“Thank you, friend,” Harv answered. We got on the bus and headed west down to Wilbur, then west on US 10 for Wenatchee. The mountains climbed up the horizon as we went toward them. They'd grown tall by the time we got to town.

Apple orchards all over the place there. The Wenatchee Chiefs played for an apple-packing outfit, matter of fact. Their crates had a solemn chief with a feather headdress and buckskin shirt on the ends. They were all over town, used for everything from apples to auto parts to secondhand books. The team played in Recreation Park. It was at the south end of town, and held about 3,500.

That was the good news. The bad news was, it was 320 down the lines but only 350 to center. The unpainted wood fence was low, too. “Oh, my aching back!” Wes said. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Daniel said, ‘My God hath sent His angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before Him innocency was found in me,'” Harv quoted. How much innocency an angel would've found in Wes, I can't tell you. But I don't know that about the Chiefs' pitcher, either.

It was the kind of game you'd expect in such a silly little ballpark. We wound up taking it, 9-7. I threw a guy out at the plate from the warning track in left-center. I'd be prouder of the throw if it were longer, but it sure went straight.

And we headed straight out of town the next morning, early, bound for Bellingham.

*   *   *

US 10 went through the Wenatchee National Forest. More pines and firs and spruces than I'd ever imagined, let alone seen. I saw dryads flitting through the forest, too, looking for saplings to live in. There's an awful lot of logging in Washington state outside the places where it's against the law. Tree spirits without trees are as sad and desperate as people without jobs or houses. I don't know what to do about that, or how much trouble it may brew down the road.

We went over Stevens Pass and down the other side. It's only 4,000 feet, though—not half so high as the ones in Colorado. Where US 10 runs into US 99 outside of Seattle, we took the 99 north to Bellingham. And along the way I saw the ocean for the very first time. It was gray. It looked cold. But I saw it. In Oklahoma, I never reckoned I would.

Bellingham is a lumber town. I wouldn't care to think about how many dryads that spent a few hundred years in a fir are trying to make homes in shrubs and rose bushes these days. The world's hard on everybody—not just on people.

In Bellingham, I didn't just see the ocean. I smelled it. Now that I've had that thrill, I almost wish I didn't. It wasn't what you'd call real clean.

I liked the Bellingham Chinooks' uniforms. They had a salmon—a chinook is a kind of salmon, I found out—jumping over a baseball bat. They were different. Battersby Park, where they played, that was different, too. Never seen anything like it before or since.

The stands were fine. It held about three thousand, so it was a tad smaller than the ballpark in Wenatchee. But whoever laid out the field must've had his head on a slant. It was 290 down the left-field line, 350 to center … and 435 to right. It was shaped like a first baseman's mitt, in other words.

Harv took one look and said, “Snake, today you're a right fielder.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “Enough ground out there—you bet.”

Fidgety Frank scratched his head, staring out at the funny field. “You know how I pitched in that Spokane park?” he said. “Well, today I gotta turn that upside down and inside out.” I saw what he meant. He'd want the Chinooks' left-handed hitters to pull to the long field. Righties, though, he'd work away so they'd hit to the opposite field.

You can always make your plans beforehand. Whether you can do what you want is another story a lot of the time. So is whether following your plan will wind up working out the way you hope.

Clouds blew off the Pacific. It was cool and damp. We'd left the dry, warm weather on the other side of the mountains. People came to the game anyhow. Most of them wore checked wool shirts, red or green or blue, and dungarees. For once, I didn't sweat like a pig in my wool flannels.

When the home team took the field, one of those loudmouthed fans you run into sometimes bellowed out, “C'mon, Chinooks!” from behind their dugout. My head swung in that direction. He shouted again. He was a sandy-haired guy in his forties, dressed like a lumberjack. I didn't know what that proved, though, since so many others there wore the same kind of clothes.

He whooped and hollered when they got us out in the first without giving up a run. In between the hollers, he drank beer. That was like putting gasoline in the engine. It kept him running.

Their third hitter clouted one out to right. But he didn't hit it over that far-off fence, so I ran it down. The big-mouthed fan booed me. I felt like tipping my cap to him, but I didn't.

When I came up to lead off the third, I bunted. I hadn't tried that in a while. If you do it all the time, word will get ahead of you. They'll play close and make it hard. I caught the Chinooks by surprise, though. Their third baseman didn't bother throwing. He just picked up the ball. That loudmouth called me about half the names in the book.

He called me the other half when I scored after Azariah pulled one over the short left-field fence. It had a stretch of chain-link above the planking, but it still wasn't high enough to stop cheap homers.