The House of Daniel (49 page)

But you know what? Everything's different in California. Pa was wrong about an awful lot of things, starting with the bottle, but he got that one right. Go out to California and it's like starting over. Everybody comes to the plate with no out, no balls, no strikes. What you were, who your people were, back wherever you came from, that doesn't matter. Almost everybody in California comes from somewhere else, and most folks go out there to get away from whatever was wrong with where they came from.

So it wasn't the drunk's son and the businessman's kid sister. It was a guy who played ball for a pretty fair traveling team and a gal from his home town who'd found work at the feed store across the street from the ballpark. If we messed it up, it wouldn't be because of who our kin were. It would be because we didn't get along, just the two of us.

Only we did get along. First time we went out, we had a Saturday-morning picnic at Meade Park, up the street from the motor lodge. Had to be a morning picnic, 'cause I was playing that afternoon. A loaf of bread, cold cuts, soda—she could've drunk beer, but I didn't want to before a game.

We ate. We talked—more about California and where we wanted to go than about Enid and where we'd been. We found out we laughed at some of the same silly things. I held her hand a little. Nothing fancy, but we enjoyed it.

We went dancing. I'll never put Fred out of business, but I don't glump around out there like a zombie, either. Mich seemed happy I made the effort. Seeing her happy made me happy. So did any excuse to get her in my arms.

Gardena had a movie house on Renshaw Boulevard. You could go there on a bus from the corner with the motor lodge and the ballpark and the feed store. That was good, since Mich didn't have a car and I didn't have anything I couldn't carry with me. She was saving money to buy a secondhand machine. Los Angeles is so spread out, a car really helps you get around.

We would sit in the parlor at the house where she rented her room. The lady whose house it was would sit across from us. She didn't like my beard one bit, not even after I explained how I needed to wear it to fit in on my team. I never found out what Mich's room looked like. That gal would've thrown me out, and Mich, too, if she'd caught me in there. That was another reason to wish one of us had a car. You can find all kinds of quiet, private places if you do.

Just after the turn of the new year, Carpetbag Booker came through Los Angeles with a barnstorming team split about fifty-fifty between colored guys and whites. Los Angeles was tougher on colored folks than a lot of places I'd seen on my travels. It surprised me some, but that's how it worked.

The night before Carpetbag's team played us, the House of Daniel took him out to dinner. We'd found what we thought was a pretty good rib joint. Carpetbag didn't seem so impressed. His standards might've been higher than ours.

He didn't fuss about it, understand. He was always polite. And he ate his fill—it wasn't that bad a place, just maybe not quite so good as we thought. Afterwards, he waggled a finger at us. “Y'all can butter me up all you pleases, but I'm still gonna whup you tomorrow afternoon. That there's my job.”

“Wouldn't think of buttering you up,” Harv said. Carpetbag laughed—he knew better. Harv went on, “And it's our job to try and beat you, too.”

“Sure enough. You kin try,” Carpetbag agreed. “But I'm gonna whup you anyways.”

And he did. We had a good crowd at Weeghman Park—seven or eight thousand. The payday made losing hurt less, but it still did. The other guys had faced him before. It was my first try. Oh, he was nasty! I figured I'd drop down a bunt, but he remembered I did that, doggone him. He threw me nothing but rising fastballs my first at-bat. When I squared, I popped one up. From then on, I took my regular hacks. That didn't help, either. Well, misery loves company, and I had plenty.

In games like those, where nobody was the proper home team, winners got sixty percent of the gate, losers forty percent—that was after the Seraphs took a cut for letting us use their ballpark. “Sorry I cost you money, Mistuh Harv,” Carpetbag said, “but I ain't real sorry, 'cause I made it myself.”

“If you stick around here, maybe we'll get some revenge,” Harv told him.

“We is in Bakersfield tomorrow, Sacramento the day after, an' Oakland the day after that,” Carpetbag answered. “I'm a travelin' man, Mistuh Harv. Don't stick around nowhere fo' long.”

Not many could say they traveled more than Harv. Carpetbag Booker was one of them, though. Back when I first met Eddie, he called himself a baseball bum. Next to Carpetbag, though, he was only a beginner.

Somewhere around that time, I realized I was serious about Mich. I can tell you just what made me see it. I started reading the want ads in the papers, looking for work in that part of town. Nothing paid as much as I was making for the House of Daniel. But before too long the team would travel on. If I had to choose between going with them and sticking around with Mich … If I was reading those want ads, that pretty much answered that question.

If we wound up together, she'd be bringing in some money from J. N. Hill's, too. And I figured I could catch on with one semipro team or another around there. That would add some. Not a lot: we'd play once or twice a week, not every day. And a town team wouldn't draw the kind of crowds the House of Daniel did. Still—some.

I had some other things to worry about, too. I knew what topped the list. Because I was serious about Mich, that didn't have to mean she was serious about me. If she wasn't, then sticking around in Los Angeles and finding myself an ordinary job weren't things I wanted to do any more. I'd go out on the road again with the House of Daniel, and I'd stick with them as long as Harv wanted me around. If anybody asked me, I'd say the same thing Eddie had. I'd tell him I was a baseball bum.

So I needed to see where I stood. Before I asked, I paid a call on a jeweler I'd found on Gardena Avenue. It wasn't a great big diamond. To tell you the truth, it was a little tiny diamond, on account of that was what I could afford. It did have a nice sparkle to it, though. Or I thought so. I hoped Mich would, too.

We went to the Tijuana Inn for supper. It was close to J. N. Hill's and to the motor lodge. They could do regular steaks, even if they spiced 'em Mexican style. We had a table in the back, where it was quiet. Well, it was pretty quiet all over. The waiters were always glad to see us. They liked regulars. They would've liked it better if they'd had more of 'em.

After we ate, I took the little velvet box out of my pocket and set it on the table. Mich stared at it and stared at me. She knew what it was likely to be. “Go ahead,” I said, my heart pounding about a thousand a minute. “Open it.”

She did. Then she stared some more. “Oh, Jack,” she whispered. “It's gorgeous.”

“You're gorgeous, honey,” I said. “Try it on.” I'd just been guessing about the size of her finger, but the jeweler promised he'd fix it for free if she couldn't wear it.

Either I was a good guesser or I got lucky. It slid onto her ring finger and didn't fall off again. She moved her hand this way and that so the stone caught the light from different angles. “It
is
gorgeous,” she said.

I thought her eyes shone more than the diamond did. My heart kept thudding away, though, 'cause I still hadn't found out what I needed to know. I took a deep breath to steady myself, the way I would have stepping up to the plate with the game on the line in the late innings.

“Do you want to marry me, then?” There. I'd said it. Scarier than that fastball behind my bean? Now that you mention it, hell yes. All that fastball could've done was knock me sideways. It wouldn't have left me eating crow, the way she would if she said no.

But she nodded. “Sure,” she said, which wasn't yes but was close enough. Then she came around the table, plopped herself down on my lap, and kissed me. I hadn't expected that, not even slightly, which isn't the same as saying I didn't like it.

The other folks in the restaurant shouted congratulations. All the waiters clapped their hands. The headwaiter went to the bar and brought us two rum-and-Cokes that could have brought a zombie to life and then put him back to sleep.

“On the house,” he said gravely.

“Thank you!” Mich and I both said.

Those were mighty fine drinks. Oh, yes. When we left, I walked as though it was blowing a gale out there, even though it wasn't. Mich could've been steadier, too. But all I had to do was make it to the motor lodge up the street. Her bus stop was right at the corner there. The bus would drop her off less than a block from the place where she rented her room.

I stood with her at the stop till the bus pulled up. Nobody else was waiting there, so we found something to do with the time. We might've found something more if the bus had run late. But it came right when it was supposed to. Stupid thing.

“Love you,” I said when she got on.

“Love you, too.” She put a dime in the fare box. The door closed behind her. The bus growled away.

I navigated back to the motor lodge. The fella who ran it nodded to me and said, “How's your gal, Snake?” By then, we'd been staying there so much that he knew as much about what was going on with the team as any of us did.

“Couldn't be better,” I answered. Was I wearing a silly grin? I couldn't see it for myself, but I know darn well I was.

*   *   *

Next morning after breakfast, before we got on the bus to go down to Recreation Park, I told Harv, “Need to talk with you for a few minutes.”

He nodded. “About your girl, is it?” No, it's not like I surprised him.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “I asked her last night, and she said yes. So—”

“So you'll be getting off the bus,” he finished for me. He laughed at the look on my face. “What? You think you're the first one who played with us for a while and then decided he wanted to do something else instead?”

“I guess not.” I hadn't thought about it at all.

Plainly, Harv had. “How long do you aim to stick around?” he asked.

“I was hoping till you guys head out of this part of the country,” I said. “That'll give you time to look for a new center fielder—or a new right fielder if you put Rabbit back in center.”

“I'm kinda thinking a right fielder, but I'll take what I can get,” Harv said. With right fielders, he could go after more hitting in exchange for a little less glovework. He'd lived with the way I hit because I could run and throw and catch, but he'd never been thrilled about it.

“I know you know, but I want to say it anyway—I'm not leaving 'cause I'm sore at anybody or 'cause I think anybody did me wrong. Just the opposite. You guys saved my life.” Ballplayers leaving the team might've told that to Harv before. I bet none of 'em meant it as literally as I did, though.

“I do know, yeah, but I'm glad to hear it. Well, you helped us out of a jam, too. You can go get 'em with anybody. And you found ways to chip in with the bat, probably more than I expected. You've got your head in the game all the time, and that's good. If you want to, you might make a pretty decent manager one of these days.”

“Don't know that I'd want to,” I said. “I've seen what a pain in the neck keeping track of a herd of ballplayers can be.”

“You think it looks bad from the outside, just wait till you try it for real,” Harv said with one of his crooked grins. He eyed me. “You
will
come down to Recreation Park this afternoon?”

“Oh, yeah!” I said.

We played another oil-company team. This one was from Onion Oil, or something like that. We'd bumped into them before. They had some old pros out there, the same way the Oilers and the Chancelors did. (We hadn't played the Chancelors since that one game at Shell Field. They didn't want anything more to do with us. If you want to think it worked both ways, I won't try to tell you you're wrong.)

The city of Long Beach ran Recreation Park. Some of the money from tickets and concessions went to it. It used that money to help people in town who were down on their luck. Nobody grumbled about it, not on our side and not on the Onion Oil team, either. It made our cut a little smaller, but we could put up with that. Plenty of folks needed money worse'n we did.

We beat the Onions. It was 5-3, 5-4, something like that. I'd like to say I hit three homers 'cause I was so happy Mich told me yes. I'd like to, but I didn't. I walked once. I bunted a couple of runners along, and one of them wound up scoring. I made two decent catches in center, and one throw that persuaded a runner of theirs not to try to come in on a fly ball. It was an all-right game, not a great one. You take what you can get.

And when we got back to the motor lodge in Gardena after supper, the man who ran it handed me an envelope. “You've got mail,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

I wondered if Mich had sent me something. She'd know the motor lodge's address. But it wasn't her handwriting—and it wasn't addressed to the lodge. It was to me, all right, but in care of the House of Daniel baseball team, Los Angeles. The post office came through on that one in a big way.

Then I saw it was from Rod Graver, back in Enid. He'd done enough things for Big Stu to know I was with the House of Daniel. And he was enough of a ballplayer to know that the House of Daniel wintered in Southern California.

I opened the envelope. Inside was a folded note.
Jack—Hope this will interest you—Rod
was all it said. With the folded sheet was a little story clipped from the
Enid Morning News
.

Restaurant Owner Found Dead
, the headline read. The story went on,
Stuart Kesselring, who owned the popular diner on Independence, was found deceased in a back room of that establishment yesterday afternoon. Police say the cause of death was three bullets to the back of the head. They are treating the case as a suicide
.