Brittle Innings

40

On Tuesday evening, the bigs played their first-ever night all-star game. Everyone in McKissic House heard the broadcast from Philadelphia over our cathedral Philco. Worldwide, U.S. servicemen listened with us over shortwave radios. Actually, Henry opted out of our party, the only resident Hellbender not on hand. He’d trudged upstairs to read, saying, “Baseball is not my entire life. In any case, at breakfast Mr Mariani will recount every pitch and putout.”

I missed Henry’s being there. Dunnagin sat on a folding chair next to me, but he and Creighton Nutter, who’d come over from Cotton Creek, picked at each other through the whole game. As an ex-Brownie, Dunnagin wanted the American League to win, while Nutter, an ex-Brave, rooted like crazy for Johnny Vander Meer and the senior-circuit Nats. Most of the rest of us, chattel of the Phutile Phillies, automatically sided with Nutter against Dunnagin. Vander Meer and Vince DiMaggio played like shining princes for their squad, but when the Americans won it five to three, Dunnagin danced around the parlor on his spindly gams. Darius spent the entire game leaning in the door to the dining room, but vanished a split second after the last broadcast play.

When I went up to tell Henry the outcome, he lay face down on his bed, softly wheezing away.

At Wednesday morning’s optional workout at McKissic Field, a major from the camp and a colored guy in a bottlefly-green jacket came onto the field just as I started to enter the batting cage. The major, a young guy with a razor slit of a mouth, put his hand on my arm.

“Excuse me, kid,” he said. “I’m Major Adrian Dexter. This is Mr Cozy Bissonette.”

I stared. That kid business burned me off. Major Dexter looked about twenty-six. Besides, visitors, outside of family and invited guests, had no standing ticket to our workouts.

“A stadium guard let us in,” Major Dexter said, nodding at the entrance tunnel. “We have an appointment.” I still didn’t speak. “With Mr Jordan McKissic, the owner and manager.” He pronounced the first name like the river-not JUR-dan, the way locals did. “Could you direct us to him, please?”

“We’d be decidedly grateful,” Cozy Bissonette said.

“C-cmon.” I led them to our dugout, where Mister JayMac sat with Darius, strategizing for our next away series.

Darius looked up, and he and Mr Bissonette each did a funny click thing with their eyes-almost a shutter snap, like a photographer catching a big-deal event and not just another family-album head shot. Major Dexter and Mister JayMac didn’t see it, and I couldn’t read it. It didn’t work only on the level of one colored greeting another, though; it also involved the sort of flash conspiracy that can happen between any two like-thinking persons, whoever they are. It scared me.

“Are we early?” Major Dexter said. “We could always-”

“Fine,” Mister JayMac said. “I’ll jes be a moment.”

I stayed there in the dugout, cat-curious and vexed, hoping to learn something.

“Go hit,” Mister JayMac told me. “I’ll handle the coaching details. You jes do what you’re paid for.” He gave me a face smile, with nothing but distracted cogitation behind it. I spike-walked back out to the batting cage.

That evening, Mister JayMac held a team meeting in the parlor. No flip charts. No recruits to introduce. No rules to review. Of the Cotton Creek bunch, Snow and Nutter seldom griped about anything, but Hoey, Sloan, Hay, and Sudikoff waltzed in bellyaching, having earlier supposed they’d have the whole day to themselves. They put a lid on it when they saw Mister JayMac impatiently pacing the hardwood.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “We’ve got a vote to take.”

“I vote no,” Hoey said. “Whatever it is.”

“ ‘Be it resolved,’ ” Dunnagin said, “ ‘that we refrain from castrating Buck Hoey the next time he fans with men on base.’ ”

Even Hoey laughed. (Henry only smiled, but, given it was Henry, count it a laugh.)

“This shouldn’t take long unless every one of yall insists on auditioning for The Grape Nuts Hour.” Mister JayMac said.

We ditched our smirks. Darius, I noticed, leaned exactly where he’d leaned during the all-star game.

“This morning, the business manager of a barnstorming club of Negro ballplayers, the Splendid Dominican Touristers, and an Army major from the-”

“Whoa,” Hoey said. “The who?”

“The Splendid Dominican Touristers. Some Negro leaguers under a rubric de guerre, so to speak.”

“Sounds like an order of stuck-up traveling monks,” Turkey Sloan said.

“Shut up, Sloan,” Vito Mariani said.

Before an argument could break out, Mister JayMac said, “Hush.” Everybody hushed. “The Negro American League-the Black Barons from over to Birmingham, the Memphis Red Sox, the Cincinnati Clowns, and so on-well, gas rationing’s hit these clubs hard. They’ve done finished a full split season. Their teams only had to play thirty games to qualify for the Negro World Series. Anyway, Mr Cozy Bissonette of Kansas City, Missouri, has assembled a group from some of the NAL’s better players, and he’s seeking exhibition opponents in advance of the club’s official formation in Atlanta early next week.”

“And the coon wants to play us?” Jerry Wayne Sosebee said.

Darius had his arms folded and his gaze fixed on a knot-hole in the floor’s oak planking. Sosebee didn’t see him, though; Darius was invisible to Sosebee.

“What about this Army major?” Muscles asked Mister JayMac.

“Major Dexter. First Battalion, Camp Penticuff Special Training Regiment. He wants to sponsor a contest between Mr Bissonette’s all-stars and us, a morale booster to kick off the club’s barnstorming tour.”

“Sir, Georgia law doesn’t allow whites and coloreds to play pro ball against each other in public,” Sloan said.

“That’s why, if yall vote to do it, we’d do it out to Camp Penticuff, where it wouldn’t be so public. For the biggest part, our spectators would be the Negro GIs of the two Special Training battalions out there.”

“Jesus,” Sosebee said.

“What’s in it for us?” That was Reese Curriden. Sometimes you could hear pocket change in his chuckles.

“The Army, Major Dexter says, has offered a payment of five hundred dollars to each club, to divvy however we choose.”

“Twenty-five bucks apiece!” Quip Parris cried happily.

“I vote yes,” Hoey said. “Whichever way we divvy it.”

“I’d recommend returning the money as a contribution to the war effort,” Mister JayMac said.

“Except like that,” Hoey said. “What are we anyway, a pack of no-account field hands?”

“Tote that bat, lift that base,” Sloan said.

“What will the Dominican Jigaboos-sorry, Touristers-do with their five hundred?” Sosebee asked.

“I don’t know,” Mister JayMac said. “Keep it, I imagine. They’ve got big expenses, their players need the money.”

“I need the money,” Hoey said. “Ever try to feed four house apes on a hundred-plus a month?”

“Hoey’s making a hundred-plus a month?” Musselwhite’s eyes went round, like such a salary staggered him.

“Hold it,” Sosebee said. “You want us to play a bunch of jigs-uh, coloreds-in front of a bunch of coloreds, and to do it for nuthin?”

“For the morale of the recruits,” Mister JayMac said. “For the joy of it. To face a squad of unknown players as good as, if not a smidgen better than, ourselves.”

Trapdoor Evans said, “They could ever one of em out-play me from here to Timbuctoo, sir, but they’s still no way-no way in hell-it’d make a one of em bettern me.”

“You said it,” Sudikoff said.

“Who plans to suit up for this Mr Bossy Nut fella on his Splendid Dominican so-and-so’s?” Curriden asked. “A whole club of Negro League all-stars?”

“No,” Mister JayMac said. “Jes better-than-most journeymen players. Yall won’t have to face the likes of Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, or Cool Papa Bell.”

“Who?” Fadeaway Ankers said.

“But never you fear, these barnstormers’ll make LaGrange’s Gendarmes look like beginning Little Leaguers.”

Henry spoke up from the back of the room. “When would we play them, if we played?”

“Good question,” Mister JayMac said. “Two Tuesdays from now, the twenty-seventh of July. The only time our schedule permits.”

“No peace for the pooped,” Muscles said. “Couldn’t this screw our shot at the pennant, Mister JayMac?”

“One game? Maybe. But only if Mr Clerval has a heart attack walloping one to the Canary Islands.”

“Let’s v-v-vote,” I said.

“I don’t play coloreds,” Fadeaway said. “Teams of em.”

“Me either,” Evans said.

“Ditto,” Sloan said. “To do great on a jig hunt, / Wear chocolate pigment / Exactly like your prey’s. / Thank God I’ve never gone through that phase.”

“Thank you, Mr Longfellow,” Mister JayMac said. “That’s three outright nays, I take it. Any more?”

“Here,” Sudikoff said. “No!”

“And here,” Sosebee said. “No!”

“Last chance,” Mister JayMac said. “Five nays to what I guess is fifteen unvoiced ayes.”

“I abstain,” Pete Hay said.

“What a pussy,” Mariani said.

“What do you mean, a pussy?” Hay said.

“A fence sitter’s got no balls,” Mariani said.

“Hush,” Mister JayMac said. “I’d hoped for unanimity in this vote. Virtual unanimity. But when a quarter of you have reservations about the appropriateness of this game, it gives me pause. I wonder about the commitment of the nay-sayers to play their hardest.”

“Cripes, sir,” Sloan said. “Don’t try to blackmail an aye out of us with this commitment guff. I mean, we-”

“Yall’re scairt you’ll git whupped,” Darius said.

Every head in the room turned towards him. He lifted his gaze from the floor and drilled Sloan with it.

“Ten dollars to every No sez them Dominicans’ll smack yall like a baby’s butt. If you got the grit to play em.”

“You aint got fifty bucks to bet,” Trapdoor Evans said. “You aint got ten to bet me.”

Darius strode like a crop fire up to Mister JayMac. “Give me fifty, sir. Gainst my nex draw.”

Mister JayMac took a money clip from his seersucker jacket, peeled off five tens, and slapped them into Darius’s palm.

Darius walked through the crowded parlor to Henry and gave him the five tens. “Mister Henry, hold this please. If yall vote it unanimous to play Mr Cozy’s boys, the bet’s on. Yall win, I pay. Hellbenders lose, like yall gon to, I git ten each from Mr Ankers, Mr Sloan, Mr Sudikoff, Mr Sosebee, and the bettern-anybody-colored Mr Evans.”

One by one, the nay-sayers changed their nays to ayes and walked over to Henry to give him either a ten-spot or a signed IOU; then they returned to their places. Henry arranged the wager money in his billfold and then slid the billfold into his frock coat. Jumbo Hank Clerval, reluctant bookie.

“I want in,” Hay said. “I vote nay too.”

“You abstained,” Mister JayMac said. “Election’s over. I don’t hold with gambling, especially for players. Except this is gonna be a unofficial exhibition, I’d veto it here too.”

“You’re a paragon, sir,” Buck Hoey said.

Mister JayMac ignored him. “Our next vote’s on the Army’s lump-sum payment. Do we return it, or do yall divvy it mongst yourselves?”

Uh-oh. Which way did you jump on this one? Patriotism or self-interest?

Curriden said, “Look. We’ll support the war effort by playing a game for Camp Penticuff’s darky recruits.” He looked at Darius. “Aint that enough? Do we have to fork over our pay too? Bet you a pork side, Mr Cozy’s boys keep theirs.”

“I don’t care what yall do with yo money,” Darius said.

“We should keep it,” Hoey said.

Sloan and friends also voted to keep and divvy the Army’s payment, and almost everyone else, including Snow and Nutter, fell in line. Even Henry voted with the mercenary majority, a surprise to me because he had his secret atonement agenda to fulfill and I thought he’d go for the sacrifice. Then I heard his reason.

“If we return our fee to the Army,” he said, “they may use it to purchase weaponry and ordnance.”

“So?” said Sudikoff.

“I abhor the making and distribution of implements that in any wise maim or kill,” Henry said.

That kind of talk didn’t go during the war. It really didn’t go in the South. Hitler wanted a hiding, and the Japs deserved any swift-kick comeuppance American determination and know-how could give them. The parlor lapsed into a silence broken only by mumbles.

“If that’s how folks’ll read us taking the Army’s money,” Charlie Snow finally said, “I vote to give it back.”

“Jumbo’s a crank on that point,” Muscles said. “Nobody’ll read it that way.”

“The greater shame,” Henry said.

In the end, of course, we voted to keep and divvy. Only Lamar Knowles and Dunnagin voted to return the honorarium to the government. Me, I went with the majority, but even today I can’t tell you if my reasons were more like Curriden’s or Henry’s. Of all the Hellbenders there, only Mister JayMac and Darius had failed to vote on the two issues before us. Anyway, the meeting started to break up.

“Hold it!” Mister JayMac jammed his hands in the pockets of his seersucker coat, stretching it out of true. “I should tell yall, the nature of this exhibition contest offers me some managerial latitude I don’t have in the CVL.”

What the hell did that mean?

“I plan to start Darius on the mound.”

That news goosed the gee-whilikers out of us. Should we hurrah or squawk? Trapdoor Evans said, “Jesus, sir, he could queer the whole game a-purpose jes to take Turkey and my and these other saps’ money.”

“It’s more than that,” Muscles said. “If we win, and if Darius finishes the game for us, them colored recruits-not to mention them Splendiferous Whozits-will say it was because one of their own was throwing for us.”

“That’s precisely the point,” Mister JayMac said.

“Why?” Muscles said. “Why?”

Mister JayMac looked over at Darius and winked: an open wink, like an open letter. Darius glanced off, the hinges in his jaw bulging.

“And if we lose,” Muscles said, “it’ll all come down to us not backing our pitcher-in their eyes, I mean. In their eyes, we’ll either ride Darius’s arm to a win or jap him with sloppy backup and weak-sister hitting.”

“And if we lose,” Evans said, “Darius picks our pockets.”

“I don’t want to pitch this one,” Darius said. “Give me some respect, Mister JayMac. Gimme some respect.”

Mister JayMac spoke to everybody: “Those who watch us and those who compete against us will judge each player on his own performance. Remember that. End of meeting.”