The Given Day

Chapter thirty-two

It was a crazy summer. No predicting it. Every time Babe thought he had a grip on it, it slipped free and went running off like a barnyard pig that smelled the ax. The attorney general’s home bombed, strikes and walkouts everywhere you looked, race riots, first in D.C., then in Chicago. The Chicago coloreds actually fought back, turning a race riot into a race war and scaring the ever-loving shit out of the entire country.

Not that it was all bad. No, sir. Who could have predicted what Babe would do with the white ball, for starters? No one, that’s who. He’d had an embarrassing May, trying to swing too big, too often, and still being asked to pitch every fifth game, so his average found the cellar:.180. Good Lord. He hadn’t seen.180 since “A” ball with Baltimore. But then Coach Barrow allowed him to lay off the pitching starts until further notice, and Babe tweaked his timing, forced himself to begin his cuts a little earlier but a little slower, too, not rev up to full power until he was halfway into the swing.

And June was glorious.

But July? July was volcanic.

The month arrived with a curl of fear at its back when word spread that the goddamned subversives and Bolshies had planned another wave of national carnage for Independence Day. Every federal facility in Boston was surrounded by soldiers, and in New York City, the entire police force was sent to guard the public buildings. By the end of the day, though, nothing had happened except for the walkout of the New England Fishermen’s Union, and Babe didn’t give a shit about that anyway because he never ate anything that couldn’t walk on its own.

On the next day, he hit two home runs in one game. Two of the fuckers — sky-high. He’d never done that before. A week later, he ripped his eleventh of the season straight at the Chicago skyline, and even the White Sox fans cheered. Last year he’d led the league with a final tally of eleven. This year, he wasn’t even warm yet, and the fans knew it. Middle of the month, in Cleveland, he hit his second home run of the game in the ninth. An impressive accomplishment on its own, another twofer, but this was a grand slam to win the game. The hometown crowd didn’t boo. Babe couldn’t believe it. He’d just driven the nail straight through the fucking coffin and down into the funeral parlor floor but the folks in the stands rose to their feet as one joyous, addled mass and chanted his name as he rounded the bases. When he crossed home, they were still standing and they were still chopping the air with their fists and still calling his name.

Babe.

Babe.

Babe …

In Detroit three days later, Babe took an 0–2 pitch, down and away, and hit the longest home run in Detroit history. The papers, always a step or two behind the fans, finally noticed. The American League single-season home run record, set in 1902, by Socks Seybold, was sixteen. Babe, heading into the third week of that stupendous July, had already smacked fourteen. And he was heading home to Boston, to sweet, sweet Fenway. Sorry, Socks, I hope you’ve done something else for people to remember you by, because I’m just going to snatch up that little ol’ record of yours, wrap my cigar in it, and set a torch to it.

He hit his fifteenth in the first game back home, against the Yanks, plopped it high in the upper deck of the right-field bleachers, watched the fans up in those cheap seats fight for it like it was food or a job as he trotted down the first base line and he noticed how full the seats were across the entire park. Double, easily, what they’d had for the World Series last year. They were in third place right now, third and sliding toward the basement. No one had any illusions about a pennant this year, so about the only thing to keep the fans coming to the ballpark was Ruth and his dingers.

And, boy, did they come. Even when they lost to Detroit a few days later, no one seemed to care because Babe hit his sixteenth long ball of the year. Sixteen. Poor Socks Seybold now had company on the podium. The streetcar and el operators had walked off the job that week (Babe thinking, for the second time that year, that the whole fucking world was walking off the job), but the stands filled anyway the next day when Babe went for magic number seventeen against those wonderfully generous Tigers.

He could feel it from inside the dugout. Ossie Vitt was up and Scott was on deck, but Babe was batting third, and the whole park knew it. He risked a glance out of the dugout as he wiped down his bat with a rag, saw half the eyes in the stadium flicking his way, hoping for a glimpse of a god, and he ducked back in again as his whole body went cold. Ice cream cold. The kind of cold he imagined you only felt just after you’d died but before they put you in the coffin, when some part of you thought you still breathed. It took him a second to realize what he’d seen. What could have done this to him. What ripped the confidence from his limbs and his soul so completely that, as he watched Ossie Vitt ground out to short and went to take his place in the on-deck circle, he feared he might never get another hit the rest of the season.

Luther.

Babe risked another sideways glance from the on-deck circle, his eyes flitting along the row just past the dugout. The front row. The money row. No way any colored man would be sitting in those seats. Never happened before, no reason to think it would happen now. A strange optical illusion then, a trick of the mind, maybe some of the pressure getting to Babe, pressure he hadn’t acknowledged until now. Silly, really, when you thought what—

There he was. Sure as summer, certain as dusk. Luther Laurence. Same light smattering of scars on his face. Same hooded, sullen eyes, and those eyes looking right at Ruth as a smile appeared in them, a tiny, knowing glint, and Luther raised his fingers to the brim of his hat, and tipped it at Ruth.

Ruth tried to smile back, but the muscles in his face wouldn’t comply as Scott popped out to shallow right. He heard the announcer call his name. He walked to the batter’s box, feeling Luther’s knowing eyes on his back the whole way. He stepped up to the plate and hit the first pitch he saw straight back into the pitcher’s glove.

So this Clayton Tomes was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Danny caught the eye of the peanut vendor and held up two fingers.

Luther nodded. “He was. Musta had jackrabbit in him, though. Didn’t say a word to me, just picked up and left.”

“Huh,” Danny said. “I met him a few times. He didn’t strike me that way. Struck me more as a sweet kid, a boy really.”

The oily brown bags came sailing through the air and Danny caught the first but let the second pass by, and it glanced off Luther’s forehead and landed in his lap.

“Thought you were some kind of baseball player.” Danny handed a nickel down the row of fans and the last man handed it to the peanut vendor.

“Gotta lot on my mind.” Luther took the first warm peanut from his bag and flicked his wrist and it bounced off Danny’s Adam’s apple and fell into his shirt. “What Mrs. Wagenfeld say about it?”

“Just chalked it up to something you darker folk do,” Danny said, reaching into his shirt. “Hired herself another houseman straightaway.”

“Colored?”

“No. I guess the new prevailing theory on the east side after you and Clayton didn’t work out is to keep it whiter up there.”

“Like this here park, uh?”

Danny chuckled. Maybe twenty-five thousand faces in Fenway that day, and not a one besides Luther’s any darker than the ball. The teams were changing sides after Ruth’s line-out to the pitcher, and the round man trotted out to left on his ballerina toes, his shoulders hunched like he was expecting a blow from behind. Luther knew Ruth had seen him, and that the seeing had rattled him. Shame had filled the man’s face like it had come from a hose. Luther almost pitied him, but then he remembered the game in Ohio, the way those white boys had soiled its simple beauty and he thought: You don’t want to feel shame? Don’t do shameful things, white boy.

Danny said, “Anything I can do to help you?”

“With what?” Luther said.

“With whatever’s been eating you up all summer. I ain’t the only one noticed. Nora’s worried, too.”

Luther shrugged. “Nothing to tell.”

“I am a cop, you know.” He tossed his shells at Luther.

Luther swept the shells off his thighs. “For now.”

Danny gave that a dark chuckle. “That’s a fact, isn’t it?”

The Detroit batter banged a cloud-climber toward left and it made a loud clang off the scoreboard. Ruth mistimed the carom and the ball hopped over his glove and he had to go stutter-stepping after it in the grass. By the time he came up with it and threw it into the infield, a simple single had turned into a triple and a run had scored.

“You really play him?” Danny said.

“Think I imagined it?” Luther said.

“No, I’m just wondering if it’s like them cactuses you’re always going on about.”

“Cacti.”

“Right.”

Luther looked out to left, watched Ruth wipe some sweat off his face with his tunic. “Yeah, I played him. Him and some of them others out there and some Cubs, too.”

“You win?”

Luther shook his head. “Can’t win against that type. If they say the sky’s green and get their buddies to agree with them, say it a few more times until they believe it, how you going to fight that?” He shrugged. “Sky’s green from then on.”

“Sounds like you’re talking about the police commissioner, the mayor’s office.”

“Whole city thinks you’re going to strike. Calling you Bolshies.”

“We’re not striking. We’re just trying to get a fair shake.”

Luther chuckled. “In this world?”

“World’s changing, Luther. The little man ain’t lying down like he used to.”

“World ain’t changing,” Luther said. “Ain’t ever going to, neither. They tell you the sky’s green until you finally say, ‘Okay, the sky’s green’? Then they own the sky, Danny, and everything underneath it.”

“And I thought I was cynical.”

Luther said, “Ain’t cynical, just open-eyed. Chicago? They stoned that colored kid ’cuz he drifted over to their side of the water. The water, Danny. Whole city’s like to burn to the ground now because they think they own water. And they’re right. They do.”

“Coloreds are fighting back, though,” Danny said.

“And what’s that going to do?” Luther said. “Yesterday, those four white men got shot to pieces on the Black Belt by six coloreds. You hear that?”

Danny nodded. “I did.”

“All anybody’s talking about is how those six coloreds massacred four white men. Those white boys had a goddamned machine gun in that car. A machine gun, and they were firing it at colored folk. People ain’t talking about that, though. They just talking about white blood running ’cuz of crazed niggers. They own the water, Danny, and the sky is green. And that’s that.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“That’s why you’re a good man. But being good ain’t enough.”

“You sound like my father.”

“Better than sounding like mine.” Luther looked at Danny, the big, strong cop who probably couldn’t remember the last time the world didn’t work out for him. “You say you’re not going to strike. Well, good. But the whole city, including the colored sections, think you are. Those boys you’re trying to get a fair shake from? They’re already two steps ahead of you, and it ain’t about money to them. It’s about you forgetting your place and stepping out of line. They won’t allow it.”

“They might not have a choice,” Danny said.

“Ain’t about choice to them,” Luther said. “Ain’t about rights or a fair shake or any of that shit. You think you’re calling their bluff. Problem is, they ain’t bluffing.”

Luther sat back and Danny did, too, and they ate the rest of their peanuts and in the fifth they had a couple beers and a couple hot dogs and waited to see if Ruth would break the AL home run record. He didn’t, though. He went zero for four and made two errors. An uncharacteristic game for him all around, and some fans wondered aloud if he’d come down with something, or if he was just hungover.

On the walk back from Fenway, Luther’s heart was banging away in his chest. It had been happening all summer, rarely for any particular reason. His throat would close up and his chest would flood with what felt like warm water and then bang-bang-bang-bang, his heart would just start going crazy.

As they walked along Mass. Ave., he looked over at Danny, saw Danny watching him carefully.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Danny said.

Luther stopped for a moment. Exhausted. Wiped out from carrying it. He looked over at Danny. “I’d have to trust you with something bigger than anyone ever trusted you with something in their lives.”

Danny said, “You tended to Nora when no one else would. That means more to me even than saving my life. You loved my wife, Luther, when I was too stupid to. Whatever you need from me?” Danny touched his chest. “You got.”

An hour later, standing over the bump of land that was Clayton Tomes’s grave in the backyard of the Shawmut Avenue building, Danny said, “You’re right. This is big. Fucking huge.”

In the house, they sat on the empty floor. It was almost done now, very little left but trim work and the painting. Luther finished telling all of it, every last bit, right down to the day last month when he’d picked the lock on the toolbox McKenna had given him. It had taken him twenty minutes, and one look inside told him everything.

No wonder it was so heavy.

Pistols.

He’d checked them, one by one, found that they were all well oiled and in good condition, though hardly new. Loaded, too. Twelve of them. A dozen loaded guns meant to be found on the day the Boston police decided to raid the NAACP and make it look like an army readying for a race war.

Danny sat silent for a long time and drank from his flask. Eventually, he handed it across to Luther. “He’ll kill you regardless.”

“I know it,” Luther said. “Ain’t me I’m concerned with. It’s Yvette. She’s like a mother to me. And I can see him, you know, just for the hell of it? ’Cause she’s what he call ‘nigger bourgeoisie’? He’ll kill her for fun. He definitely want to jail her. That’s what the guns are all about.”

Danny nodded.

“I know he’s like blood to you,” Luther said.

Danny held up a hand. He closed his eyes and rocked slightly in place.

“He killed that boy? For nothing?”

“For nothing but being black and alive.”

Danny opened his eyes. “Whatever we do from this point on …? You understand.”

Luther nodded. “Dies with us.”

Connor’s first big federal case involved an ironworker named Massimo Pardi. Pardi had stood up at a meeting of the Roslindale Ironworkers Union, Local 12, and proclaimed that the safety conditions at Bay State Iron & Smelting had better improve immediately or the company “might find itself smelted right to the ground.” He’d been loudly cheered before four other men — Brian Sullivan, Robert Minton, Duka Skinner, and Luis Ferriere — had lifted him onto their shoulders and walked him around the room. It was that action and those men who sealed Pardi’s fate: 1 + 4 = syndicalism. Plain and simple.

Connor filed deportation orders against Massimo Pardi in district court and argued his case before the judge on the grounds that Pardi had violated the Espionage and Sedition Act under the antisyndicalist laws of the Commonwealth and therefore should be deported back to Calabria where a local magistrate could decide if any further punishment were necessary.

Even Connor was surprised when the judge agreed.

Not the next time, though. Certainly not the time after that.

What Connor finally realized — and what he hoped would hold him in good stead as long as he practiced law — was that the best arguments were those shorn of emotion or inflammatory rhetoric. Stick with the rule of law, eschew polemic, let precedent speak for you, and leave opposing counsel to choose whether to fight the soundness of those laws on appeal. It was quite the revelation. While opposing counsel thundered and raged and shook their fists in front of increasingly exasperated judges, Connor calmly pointed out the logical strictures of justice. And he could see in the eyes of the judges that they didn’t like it, they didn’t want to agree. Their seepy hearts held for the defendants, but their intellects knew truth when they saw it.

The Massimo Pardi case was to become, in hindsight, emblematic. The ironworker with the big mouth was sentenced to a year in jail (three months time served), and deportation orders were filed immediately. If his physical eviction from the country were to occur before he finished his sentence, the United States would graciously commute the remainder of it once he reached international waters. Otherwise, he did the full nine months. Connor, of course, felt some sympathy for the man. Pardi seemed, in the aggregate, an inoffensive sort, a hard worker who’d been engaged to be married in the fall. Hardly a threat to these shores. But what he represented — the very first stop on the road to terrorism — was quite offensive. Mitchell Palmer and the United States had decided the message needed to be sent to the world — we will no longer live in fear of you; you will live in fear of us. And that message was to be sent calmly, implacably, and constantly.

For a few months that summer, Connor forgot he was angry.

The Chicago White Sox came to town after Detroit and Ruth went out with a few of them one night, old friends from the farm league days, and they told him that order had been restored to their city, the army finally cheesing it to the niggers and putting them down once and for all. Thought it would never end, they said. Four days of shooting and pillaging and fires and all because one of theirs swam where he wasn’t supposed to. And the whites hadn’t been stoning him. They’d just been throwing rocks into the water to warn him off. Ain’t their fault he wasn’t a good swimmer.

Fifteen whites dead. You believe that? Fifteen. Maybe the niggers had some legitimate grievances, okay, yeah, but to kill fifteen white men? World was upside down.

It was for Babe. After that game where he’d seen Luther, he couldn’t hit shit. Couldn’t hit fastballs, couldn’t hit curves, couldn’t hit it if it had been sent to him on a string at ten miles an hour. He fell into the worst slump of his career. And now that the coloreds had been put back in their place in D.C. and Chicago, and the anarchists seemed to have gone quiet, and the country might have been able to take just one easy breath, the agitators and agitation sprang up from the least likely of quarters: the police.

The police, for Christ’s sake!

Every day of Ruth’s slump brought more signs that push was coming to shove and the city of Boston was going to pop at the seams. The papers reported rumors of a sympathy strike that would make Seattle look like an exhibition game. In Seattle it had been public workers, sure, but garbagemen and transit workers. In Boston, word was, they’d lined up the firemen. If the cops and the jakes walked off the job? Jeepers Crow! The city would become rubble and ash.

Babe had a regular thing going now with Kat Lawson at the Hotel Buckminster, and he left her sleeping one night and stopped in the bar on his way out. Chick Gandil, the White Sox first baseman, was at the bar with a couple fellas, and Babe headed for them but saw something in Chick’s eyes that immediately warned him off. He took a seat down the other end, ordered a double scotch, and recognized the guys Chick was talking to: Sport Sullivan and Abe Attell, errand boys for Arnold Rothstein.

And Babe thought: Uh-oh. Nothing good’s going to come of this.

Around the time Babe’s third scotch arrived, Sport Sullivan and Abe Attell removed their coats from the backs of their chairs and left through the front door, and Chick Gandill walked his own double scotch down the length of the bar and plopped into the seat next to Babe with a loud sigh.

“Gidge.”

“Babe.”

“Oh, right, right. Babe. How you doing?”

“Ain’t hanging with mutts, that’s how I’m doing.”

“Who’s the mutts?”

Babe looked at Gandill. “You know who the mutts are. Sport Sullivan? Abe Fucking Attell? They’re mutts work for Rothstein and Rothstein’s the mutt of mutts. What the fuck you doing talking to a pair of mutts like that, Chick?”

“Gee, Mom, next time let me ask permission.”

“They’re dirty as the Muddy River, Gandil. You know it and anyone else with eyes knows it, too. You get seen with a pair of diamond dandies like that, who’s going to believe you ain’t taking?”

“Why do you think I met him here?” Chick said. “This ain’t Chicago. It’s nice and quiet. And no one’ll get wind, Babe, my boy, long as you keep your nigger lips shut.” Gandil smiled and drained his drink and dropped it to the bar. “Shoving off, my boy. Keep swinging for the fences. You’ve gotta hit one sometime this month, right?” He clapped Babe on the back and laughed and walked out of the bar.

Nigger lips. Shit.

Babe ordered another.

Police talking about a strike, ballplayers talking to known fixers, his home-run-record chase stalled at sixteen because of a chance sighting of a colored fella he’d met once in Ohio.

Was anything fucking sacred anymore?