The House of Daniel (46 page)

“Plenty warm on land,” I said.

“Oh, yeah.” Wes nodded. “The ocean, though, the ocean feels like there oughta be polar bears coming out of it.”

The cabins at the motor lodge where we stayed looked like cabins—I mean log cabins where you might meet up with Honest Abe or somebody wearing fringed moccasins and a coonskin cap. They weren't. The logs that made the outside walls were painted stucco, and the bark shakes on the roof were just as fake. Inside, the cabin had smooth plaster walls and electric lights and running water and anything else they would have had in Spokane or Amarillo … or Chicago, come to that.

“Pretty crazy,” I said.

“It is, yeah,” Eddie said. I reminded myself this wasn't the first time he'd seen Los Angeles in all its glorious weirdness. I was the new fish. I wasn't used to such things. He flopped on the bed. Around a yawn, he went on, “Mattress feels good. And we won't have to get up early to go somewhere else. We're already here.”

“Uh-huh.” I yawned, too. I was ready for a good night's sleep.

Being ready for one didn't mean I got one. Some time in the middle of the night, a vampire tapped on the window. I was mad when I woke up. You'd think a place like a motor lodge would be properly warded, especially after the Great Zombie Riots. You'd think so, but no such luck.

“Go tell it to get lost, Snake,” Eddie said. I'd done it before, so he knew I wouldn't just let the thing in. And I was still the new guy on the team. Annoying crap like that landed on me.

“Let me in!” the vampire said when I went to the window. Moonlight glowed in its eyes. They're supposed to be able to mesmerize you, but not that night. I was ticked off, not mesmerized.

“Get lost,” I said. The cross under my shirt gleamed. You could see that, but you couldn't make out what it was. The vampire didn't have to flee.

And it didn't. “Let me in!” it said again. “Let me liberate you from bourgeois respectability. Keep your own company! Keep your own hours! Meet the people you want to meet, not the ones your boring business makes you deal with. Meet them, and set them free, too!”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. Bourgeois respectability! Boring business! That vampire hadn't tried biting any semipro ballplayers before, had it? It had no idea how fouled up it was. “Get lost, I said,” I told it, and started to reach under my shirt to bring out the cross and make it go.

Quickly, it said, “Wait!” I didn't mean to hesitate, but I must've, because it went on, “With your looks, I can get you going in Hollywood if you let me make you a blood brother. Honest, I can! I've got connections up there—so help me, I do.”

Honest? That was funnier yet, coming from a vampire. It was trying anything to sink its fangs into my throat, same as a guy will try anything to lay his girl. Of course, there are so many bloodsuckers in Hollywood, what the thing said had maybe a quarter of a chance of being true. If only I'd wanted to break into films, that might've made a difference. But I didn't, so it didn't.

I pulled out the cross. It shone like a flashbulb, hot and blue-white. The vampire's scowl of pain showed off its long, pointed teeth. “Go away!” I said one more time. “You can't come in here.” The flash faded. When I looked out the window again, the vampire was gone.

“Was it talking about the movie business?” Eddie asked. “Did I really hear that?”

“You sure did,” I said.

He whistled. “That's a line you'd only get here. Is the thing gone now?”

I checked one more time to make certain. No glow from the cross. No vampire outside the window. “It's gone, all right.”

“Okey-doke. C'mon back to bed, then,” Eddie said. And I did.

*   *   *

There's a part of Long Beach they call Semaphore Hill, because a signal tower stood at the top before Consolidated Crystal and the telephone put those out of business. These days, it's all over oil wells and derricks.

Shell Field sat at the bottom of Semaphore Hill. We were taking on the Shell Oilers there. It was as nice a ballpark as most small-town minor-league fields. Wooden roofed-over grandstand. Bleachers. Roofed-over dugouts, too, so you didn't bake your brains under the hot sun. Wooden fences.

One of the Oilers told me the Bambino and Larrupin' Lou barnstormed through there. Carpetbag Booker, too, though not on the same tour. Where
hadn't
he been? Along with guys who worked on the wells and derricks, the Oilers had fellas who'd played in the bigs or the Coast League. They were at least as good as most small-town minor-league teams.

Their pitcher wasn't old enough to have bounced down. By the bite on his curve, he was on the way up. If he stayed sound—you talk about pitchers the way you talk about racehorses, because both kinds of critter are always breaking down—he wouldn't have SHELL OIL on his chest and the Shell shell on his sleeve much longer. He'd play for the Hilltoppers or the New York Titans or the Bengals or Buccaneers.

Fidgety Frank gave it everything he had. By his wiggles and thrashes out on the mound, he was coming down with St. Vitus' Dance or Saturday Night Fever, one. He would have confused a lot of semipro hitters if he couldn't have got them out any other way. The Shell Oilers, though, they'd been around the block a good many times. They'd seen guys like Frank before. They waited for the ball, and then they clouted it.

After a while, I started wishing for a bicycle out there in center. I kept dashing into the gaps, now to my right, now to my left, and trying to hit the cutoff man with my throws. Sometimes, for a change, I'd run straight back when an Oiler smashed one over my head.

They thumped us to beat the band. And they had a band, down by their dugout: trumpets and clarinets, a banjo, a fiddle, and a drum kit. The guys in it wore white musicians' uniforms with the Shell shell on their jackets. Like the guy in New Mexico who sang, they were semipros, too.

It got bad enough so Azariah came in to finish it off and make it worse. The final, unless I misremember, was 12-5. You couldn't have proved by the way we played that those Oilers were too washed up for the Coast League or even the bigs.

“Well, that was horrible,” Harv said as we got into our street clothes. One thing about Harv: he didn't waste time beating around the bush. He went on, “The worst part is, we got to come back here tomorrow. We play Chancelor Canfield/Midway Oil tomorrow. We better not look like a bunch of jerks in that game, too—that's all I got to tell you. If the folks around here decide we're lousy, they won't want to book matches with us. And that'll skinny up our wallets pretty blasted quick.”

If Harv wanted me to be worried when we went back to Shell Field the next day, he knew how to get what he wanted. The guys from the other oil company might lick us the way the Shell Oilers had. If they did, we really would look like a team that made its name beating up on nobodies. We knew better, but the Los Angeles people and the barnstorming teams wouldn't.

Most of the time, Fidgety Frank was a better pitcher than Wes, too. Nobody said anything like that, but I couldn't have been the only one thinking it. Well, all we could do was play the game and see how it came out.

The guys on the Chancelor Canfield/Midway Oil team had a big C over their hearts, so I'll just call 'em Chancelors from now on. They looked sharp getting loose. Their pitcher made the catcher's mitt pop when he fired 'em in.

Then he made Azariah's ribs pop. He drilled him with the second pitch of the game. Azariah went down in a heap. He got up and walked to first real slow. Amos hit a chopper to short. Azariah broke up the double play and spiked their second baseman doing it.

“Hoo boy! Gonna be a warm afternoon.” Harv wasn't talking about the weather.

Wes took the mound. His first fastball lowbridged the Chancelors' leadoff man. His second pitch caught the guy square on the kneecap. They had to run for him. Wes picked the runner off. Yeah, a warm afternoon, all right.

We were up 4-0 in the sixth when the real fun started. One of their big galoots threw a body block into Eddie at second base. That wouldn't have done the trick by itself, but the Chancelor kinda kicked at him while he was on the ground. Eddie bounced up and swung—not smart, maybe, but brave.

Lots of fights start around second because there are so many chances to do that kind of thing. Everybody on both teams swarmed into this one. I wanted to take a shot at their pitcher, and I guess they were gunning for Wes. But Wes could take care of himself. He coldcocked a Chancelor with a right to the jaw. The guy went down and stayed down. After that, they decided maybe they weren't gunning so much for Wes after all.

“Break it up! Knock it off!” the umps yelled. When we felt like it, we did.

They threw Eddie out of the game, and the guy who knocked him halfway to shortstop. Wes stayed in—don't ask me how or why. Maybe they didn't see him flatten that Chancelor. The fella did wake up and get back in the game, but he spat out a tooth, too. He'd be paying his dentist for some bridgework.

The crowd loved it. They cheered us as much as the Chancelors. Those guys were just using Shell Field. It belonged to the Oilers.

I was first guy to the plate in our half of the seventh. Their pitcher threw behind my head. You only do that when you're really out to hurt somebody. I froze. I was lucky. If I'd ducked, I would've gone straight back into the baseball.

I looked out at him. If he wanted to play like that … I dropped a bunt down the first-base line. He ran over to field it, and I gave him a better shot than their guy did with Eddie. I stepped on his foot, too. That was just by accident. Of course.

He got up and charged me, and the benches cleared again. When the dust settled this time, I got run and so did their pitcher. We hit their reliever hard, and ended up winning 9-1.

“Hey, Harv, I think people here will notice us now,” Wes said after the game.

“Could be.” Harv was grinning wide as a bullfrog. He turned my way. “Snake, I didn't know you had that in you.”

I shrugged. “He was trying to put me in the hospital. Hit me in the ribs or on the elbow? Okey-doke. You can get away with that. Throw behind my head? You got to pay the price.”

“Amen!” Wes said, as if he was shouting out for a preacher in a colored church. I didn't look for us to have any more games like that one around Los Angeles. Word would spread fast. This year's House of Daniel didn't turn the other cheek. It hit back, hard.

*   *   *

Those two games were the only ones we played at Shell Field. That was bound to be just as well. We went north and west for one against the Torrance Columbias. Their guys worked at the Columbia steel mill there. Some of 'em didn't work real hard. They were another semipro team where half the players had been pros not long before.

We beat 'em anyway. Fidgety Frank pitched great. You never can tell, that's all. Maybe he hadn't had his good stuff the last time out. Maybe it was just horses for courses, and the Oilers thought he made a tasty snack while the Columbias couldn't figure him out for beans. The harder you try to understand why baseball works the way it does, the loopier it'll drive you.

Oh. It was about as polite a game as any you'll see. No brushbacks. No rough slides around second base. After it was over, their manager said to Harv, “The Chancelors always try and push teams around. A little bird told me you pushed back. Good for you.”

“I'd sooner play baseball than basebrawl any day,” Harv answered. “But some people, if you let 'em have an inch, they'll grab for a mile. Not against the House of Daniel, though.”

“Fine by me,” the Columbias' boss man said. “I wish we didn't come out on the short end today, but we played the best we could. Anybody can see the stories are true, and your guy on the hill's been keeping company with Carpetbag Booker.”

“I heard that!” Fidgety Frank said. “Thanks!” The stories the Columbia was talking about had to come from Denver. Nice to know some news about the
Post
tournament leaked out along with all the stuff from the Great Zombie Riots.

We went north again the next day. Not far, just up to a little town called Gardena. Some of it was suburbs—houses of clapboard or stucco, a lot of them with roofs of the half-round red tiles they call Spanish. Some was truck farms and chicken ranches. Japs had a lot of the farms; most of the guys who raised chickens were Mexicans.

They had themselves a fine ballpark there. Todd Field sat at the corner of two streets named Redondo and Vermont Beach. Vermont doesn't have any beaches that I know of. Didn't stop whoever gave the streets their handles. It was only 303 to the right-field line, but they had a thirty-foot screen to cut the homers down to size. Left was 340, and it went out to 417 in center. Wood pillars held up the tin grandstand roof. Every so often, a foul pop would clank back onto it.

That place couldn't have worked out better. Our motor lodge was right across the street from Todd Field. On one of the other corners of that intersection was a feed store. Most big-city suburbs, you wouldn't expect to see something like that. But what with the little farms and the chicken ranches, J. N. Hill's made a go of it.

Seeing the feed store put me in mind of Charlie Carstairs back in Enid. He ran the same kind of business. I hoped Big Stu never did manage to get his pound of flesh out of Charlie. I hoped his goons never caught up with Mich Carstairs, too. His other goons, I should say. Big Stu's goon was what I started out as, after all.

Our first game at Todd Field was against the Strawberry Park Pickers. Strawberry Park was the section of Gardena where they raised, well, strawberries. The Pickers were a Jap team. They all spoke English, and most of 'em were born over here, but they still looked like Japs. If the House of Daniel had squared off against the Tokyo Titans—Japs from Japan—then Japs from Gardena wouldn't faze Harv. They didn't bother me, either. Going up against colored guys had felt a lot more peculiar.