Double Play

38.

It was still raining as Burke drove downtown. The taillights of the cars were like jewels in the rain. Jackie sat beside Burke staring through the front windshield where the wipers moved back and forth. His hands were clenched and he began to tap his thighs with them. The tapping got hard.

“Lotta money,” Burke said.

“Everybody wants a piece,” Jackie said as if Burke hadn’t said anything. “Everybody wants a damn piece.”

“Nothing new there,” Burke said.

“I know.”

“Take it as a compliment,” Burke said.

“Thing is what they say make some sense,” Jackie said. “Be other colored players coming along after me, and eventually all the good ones be playing in the white leagues.”

“Ain’t that sort of the idea?” Burke said.

“Be putting a lotta Negroes out of business,” Jackie said. “The Negro leagues go under, and a lot of Negro players, the ones with less skill, gonna be out of a job.”

“True for white players too,” Burke said.

“White?” Jackie said.

“Every Negro comes into the major leagues,” Burke said, “is one less white man.”

Jackie was silent for a moment as they drove downtown in the rain.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” he said after a while.

“Nothing’s simple,” Burke said. “You’re doing a good thing.”

Jackie looked at Burke in silence for almost a full block.

Then he said, “Burke, you been thinking about this. I didn’t know you thought about anything.”

“I got nothing else to do,” Burke said.

“So what else do you think?”

“Don’t you read Time magazine? You’re conducting a fucking social experiment.”

Jackie nodded.

“And when it’s over,” Burke said, “five years down the line, ten, whenever, the best players are the ones gonna make the show. Spics, spades, Yids, Arabs, Eskimos, Japs, fat guys from Baltimore, whoever can make it, makes it.”

Jackie didn’t say anything. Burke didn’t say anything else. The city glistened as they drove through it. The rain-washed cabs were clean yellow. The traffic lights blurred by the rain looked like wet flowers. Every lighted window along the street looked cozy behind the steady gray rain slant. Restaurants looked inviting. The streets were shiny black. The people on the streets and in the doorways, collars up, umbrellas opened, looked peaceful. A policeman in a gleaming slicker and hat was directing traffic around a street excavation. Burke slowed, but the cop waved him forward. And they drove on past.