Brittle Innings

2

Jordan McKissic-Mister JayMac to everyone in Highbridge, as I learned later-came riding into Oklahoma in a Pullman car behind an old steam engine. He planned to watch two Red Stix games, one on a Saturday, one the following Tuesday, and return to Georgia. April of ’43, two weeks before the Hellbenders kicked off their regular season. Mister JayMac came by train because the Office of Defense Transportation had nixed pleasure driving. You could legally call a scouting trip business, but patriotic pols-like the scoundrels LaGuardia’d lit into in the paper-wouldn’t admit pro ball deserved that courtesy.

’Forty-three was the year the ODT forbid major leaguers to go South for spring training. Except for the Cardinals, who practiced in St. Louis, ballplayers had to train east of the Mississip and north of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. Wiseguys called this the Landis-Eastman Line, after Baseball Commissioner Landis and the fella heading up the ODT. Mister JayMac was a mucky-muck on the Hothlepoya County draft board, down in Highbridge. To do his part for national defense, he’d left his Cadillac and colored driver at home and faced the blowing coal dust and the jostling hoi polloi on a passenger train.

In Tenkiller, Mister JayMac stayed in the Cass Mansion. I first laid eyes on him on Saturday, when he climbed into the Deck Glider bleachers with Mama and his hosts. He stood out in that crowd. He was pushing sixty-a couple of years younger than I am now-but tall, fit, and dapper. He wore a striped white dress shirt, old-fashioned pleated linen trousers, and a pair of military-pink suspenders. His hair was iron gray, cut close at temples and neck. A salt-and-peppery forelock fell over his forehead like an owlet’s wing. Even from my shortstop position, I could see this terrific blue glint in his eyes: a sharper blue than Miss Tulipa’s, like sapphire dust bonded to a couple of zinc-coated war pennies.

From the stands, Mister JayMac watched me. He watched Toby Watersong, Franklin Gooch, every kid on both teams. Whenever I had the chance, I watched him back. Mister JayMac was the Great Stone Face, perched above the hubbub like a Supreme Court judge, mysterious and cool. Studying.

I had a good game Saturday, thank God, a couple of singles and an unassisted double play at short. Afterwards, I sort of expected Mister JayMac to come down and speak, maybe even to make me a job offer, but he and the Elshtains vanished, off to the Cass Mansion, I guess, without so much as a nod. In the stands, Mama said, Miss Tulipa and the colonel had been as supportive of the team and as complimentary of me as ever, but Mister JayMac had scarcely spoken two words.

“Not my notion of a courtly Suthren gentleman,” Mama said. “Eyes like a starved wolf’s.”

The Red Stix never practiced Sundays, and Mister JayMac didn’t attend church with Miss Tulipa and the colonel. Monday, though, he watched us from the stands on the third-base line, taking in our every wind sprint, pepper game, and half-assed batting-practice bunt. I could feel him studying me, intense and chillylike. The process-letting him gander-reminded me of what a beauty-pageant hopeful has to suffer.

During this workout, I muffed a cozy roller at short, then overthrew Jessie Muldrow at first trying to outgun the runner. Bad. Baaad. At the plate, I swung too hard, topping the ball once and popping it up on my second at bat. Rotten. Not even the Phillies would’ve wanted me. Time I got a third chance to hit, Mister JayMac’d vamoosed. I got on base, but with a cheap swinging bunt I legged out from sheer embarrassment. But so what? Mama’d better check with Colonel Elshtain to see if Deck Glider had an assembly-line job for me.

Tuesday afternoon, in a game against Checotah, I forgot the crowd, the bench jockeys in the other dugout, the dogs barking on Cookson Road, everything but the rope-sized seams on every ball floating my way. Don’t know why, but the ball looked big as the moon to me. Hitting or fielding, I couldn’t miss it. For all the effect he had on me, Mister JayMac-up in our stands-could’ve been in the Belgian Congo. I played great. Afterwards, the boys from Checotah got on their bus as low and hollowed-out as dogwood stumps.

Mister JayMac didn’t speak to me after this game, either. Once we’d put it away, I did start thinking about him again, my ticket out of Tenkiller. When he still didn’t show up, though, I thought, Nuts to you, mister.

Shortly after supper that evening, Mister JayMac showed up at our stucco house on Cody Street. Five-and-a-half rooms, just big enough for a couch, a pair of beds, a beat-up table, a w.c., and a cheap cathedral radio. It always seemed to smell of hash and eggs.

Mister JayMac didn’t reach six feet, but in a buttermilk coat with awning-sized lapels and pockets, he filled our house the way a film actor can sometimes glut a whole movie screen. Mama got a chair from the kitchen and made him sit. Didn’t want him looming. Then, like two kids in a dentist’s waiting room, she and I huddled together on the sofa.

“Ma’am,” Mister JayMac said, “I’d like your son to come with me to Highbridge tomorrow.” He didn’t bother to look at me. He aimed all his magnolia gallantry at Mama. “My club, the Hellbenders, has need of him.”

“So do the Red Stix. Plus, Danny’s got school to finish.”

“Yessum,” Mister JayMac said.

“He’s been going twelve years, nearly,” Mama said. “Why fall shy of a sheepskin by a piddlin two months?”

“Why, indeed? An enlightened attitude,” Mister JayMac said.

“He needs his education.”

“ ‘What sculpture is to a block of marble,’ ” Mister JayMac told Mama, “ ‘education is to the soul.’ Addison.”

“Well, Addison spoke true.”

“Yes he did,” Mister JayMac said. “But there’s education and there’s education. If Danny doesn’t return to Highbridge with me tomorrow, he’ll miss the chance to train with us and the opening month of our season.” He pulled a string-tied packet from inside his coat. “Here’s a contract, Mrs Boles.” He untied the packet and handed an official-looking form with a clip-on to Mama. “Also a check for seventy-five dollars, his first full month’s pay.” He could’ve dropped a garter snake down my shirt-that kind of thrill went through me. “But, Mrs Boles, you must countersign my enabling form and let Danny go back with me.” He reached over and tapped the check.

I was a slave who wanted to be sold. School was lectures and yawns, girls smirking and wiseacres pulling stupid jokes.

Mama stared down at my clipped-on check. “Coach Brandon says some nigger ballplayers make twice this, maybe.”

“That’s probably true,” Mister JayMac said. “I daresay those players draw better than Danny’s likely to jes yet.”

“Well, he can’t go now anyway,” Mama said. “Even when he can, seventy-five won’t do. That’s coffee-and-cake pay. Danny may jes be starting, but no colored boy ought to make more than him.”

My mama, the John L. Lewis of ball agents. All she needed was Lewis’s eyebrows. Mister JayMac ripped up his check, and I almost swallowed my tongue. Smithereened. My whole career.

“Mrs Boles, you drive a hard bargain.” Mister JayMac took the contract back. “I’ll up his pay twenty-five and send yall a new contract. Forget this one. Mr Boles,” finally looking at me, “we’ll send you a train ticket. Ride down soon’s you’ve got your diploma, hear?”

I tried to answer. “Yessir,” I wanted to say, but it might as well’ve been the Lord’s Prayer in Gullah.

As promised, the revised contract came two weeks later. Mama and I signed it for a notary, with Coach Brandon and the Elshtains as witnesses. Two, three days later, Mr Ogrodnik announced my good fortune to the student body in the gym. Kids cheered, pretty girls and class-officer types among them. If I’d had the guts, I’d’ve dynamited half the hypocrites there, even though I did like hearing them cheer.

Franklin Gooch said I was a lucky bastard. When we’d won the war, guys like DiMaggio, Williams, and Greenberg would come home and their stay-at-home subs would disappear completely. A real talent, though, would survive.

“You,” Goochie said, “are a real talent.”

Goochie was already eighteen. Early in ’42, his mama’s younger brother had been killed on the cruiser Houston in the Battle of the Java Sea. Goochie wanted to take a few Jap scalps in the Marines, but he didn’t begrudge me my shot at a career in pro ball. Envied me, but didn’t call me a feather merchant. He had other kettles of fish to fry. Too bad his goals led him into the hands of a graves-registration crew on Okinawa.