The Given Day

  When he left with his agent, Johnny Igoe, Johnny suggested they pop over to the St. Vincent Orphan Asylum just a few blocks away. Couldn’t hurt, Johnny said, add to the positive press and maybe give Babe an edge in his latest round of bargaining with Harry Frazee. Babe felt weary, though—weary of bargaining, weary of cameras snapping in his face, weary of orphans. He loved kids and orphans in particular, but boy oh boy those kiddos this morning, all hobbled and broken and burned, really took something out of him. The ones with the missing fingers wouldn’t grow them back and the ones with sores on their faces wouldn’t look in a mirror someday and find the scars vanished and the ones in wheelchairs wouldn’t wake up one morning and walk. And yet, at some point, they’d be sent out into the world to make their way, and it had overwhelmed Babe this morning, just sucked the juice out of him.

  So he ditched Johnny by telling him he needed to go buy a gift for Helen because the little woman was angry with him again. This was partly true—Helen was in a snit, but he wasn’t shopping for a gift, not in any store leastways. He walked toward the Castle Square Hotel instead. The raw November breeze spit drops of sharp, random rain, but he was warm in his long ermine coat, and he kept his head tilted down to keep the drops from his eyes and enjoyed the quiet and anonymity that greeted him on deserted streets. At the hotel, he passed through the lobby and found the bar almost as empty as the streets, and he took the first seat inside the door and shrugged off his coat and laid it over the stool beside him. The bartender stood down at the far end of the bar, talking to the other two men in the place, so Ruth lit a cigar and looked around at the dark walnut beams and inhaled the smell of leather and wondered how in the hell this country was going to get along with any dignity now that Prohibition looked a dead certainty. The No-Funs and the Shouldn’t-Dos were winning the war, and even if they called themselves Progressives, Ruth couldn’t see much progress in denying a man a drink or shuttering a place of warm wood and leather. Hell, you worked an eighty-hour week for shit pay it seemed the least to ask that the world give you a mug of suds and a shot of rye. Not that Ruth had worked an eighty-hour week in his life, but the principle still applied.

  The bartender, a wide man with a thick mustache curled up so violently at the edges you could hang hats on it, came walking down the bar. “What can I get you?”

  Still feeling a glow of kinship with the workingman, Ruth ordered two beers and a shot, make it a double, and the bartender placed the drafts before him and then poured a healthy glass of whiskey.

  Ruth drank some beer. “I’m looking for a man named Dominick.”

  “That’d be me, sir.”

  Ruth said, “I understand you own a strong truck, do some hauling.”

  “That I do.”

  Down the other end, one of the men rapped the edge of a coin off the bar top.

  “Just a second,” the bartender said. “Them’s some thirsty gents, sir.”

  He walked back down the bar and listened to the two men for a moment, nodding his large head, and then he went to the taps and after that to the bottles, and Ruth felt the two men watching him, so he watched them back.

  The one on the left was strapping tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and so glamorous (it was the first word that popped into Babe’s head) that Babe wondered if he’d seen him in the flickers or in the pages of the papers devoted to returning war heroes. Even from down the other end of a long bar, his simplest gestures—raising a glass to his lips, tapping an unlit cigarette on the wood—achieved a grace that Ruth associated with men of epic deeds.

  The man beside him was much smaller and less distinct. He was milky and dour and the bangs of his mousy brown hair kept falling over his forehead; he brushed them back with an impatience Ruth judged feminine. He had small eyes and small hands and an air of perpetual grievance.

  The glamorous one raised his glass. “A great fan of your athleticism, Mr. Ruth.”

  Ruth raised his glass and nodded his thanks. The mousy one didn’t join in.

  The strapping man clapped his friend on the back and said, “Drink up, Gene, drink up,” and his voice was the baritone of a great stage actor hitting the back row.

  Dominick placed fresh drinks in front of them and they returned to their conversation, and Dominick came back to Ruth and topped off his whiskey, then leaned back against the cash register. “So you need something hauled, do you, sir?”

  Babe sipped his whiskey. “I do.”

  “And what would that be, Mr. Ruth?”

  Babe took another sip. “A piano.”

  Dominick crossed his arms. “A piano. Well, that’s not too—”

  “From the bottom of a lake.”

  Dominick didn’t say anything for a minute. He pursed his lips. He stared past Ruth and seemed to listen for the echo of an unfamiliar sound.

  “You’ve got a piano in a lake,” he said.

  Ruth nodded. “Actually it’s more like a pond.”

  “A pond.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, which is it, Mr. Ruth?”

  “It’s a pond,” Babe said eventually.

  Dominick nodded in a way that suggested past experience with such a problem and Babe felt a thump of hope in his chest. “How does a piano manage to get itself submerged in a pond?”

  Ruth fingered his whiskey. “You see, there was this party. For kids. Orphans. My wife and I held it last winter. You see, we were having work done on our house, so we’d rented a cottage on a lake not too far away.”

  “On a pond you mean, sir.”

  “On a pond, yeah.”

  Dominick poured himself a small drink and threw it back.

  “So, anyway,” Babe said, “everyone was having a fine old time, and we’d bought all the little tykes skates and they were stumbling around the pond—it was frozen.”

  “I gathered, sir, yes.”

  “And um, I, well, I sure do like playing that piano. And Helen sure does as well.”

  “Helen’s your wife, sir?”

  “She is.”

  “Noted,” Dominick said. “Proceed, sir.”

  “So myself and some of the fellows decided to take the piano from the front room and push it down the slope onto the ice.”

  “A fine idea at the time, I’m sure, sir.”

  “And that’s what we did.”

  Babe leaned back in his chair and relit his cigar. He puffed until he got it going and took a sip of his whiskey. Dominick placed another beer in front of him and Babe nodded his thanks. Neither of them said anything for a minute and they could hear the two men at the other end talking about alienated labor and capitalist oligarchies and it could have been in Egyptian for all that Babe understood it.

  “Now here’s the part I don’t understand,” Dominick said.

  Babe resisted the urge to cringe on his barstool. “Go ahead.”

  “You’ve got it out on the ice. And does it crack through the ice, taking all those tads on skates with it?”

  “No.”

  “No,” Dominick said softly. “I believe I would have read about that. So, my question then, sir—How did it manage to go through the ice?”

  “The ice melted,” Ruth said quickly.

  “When?”

  Babe took a breath. “It was March, I believe.”

  “But the party…?”

  “Was in January.”

  “So the piano sat on the ice for two months before it sank.”

  “I kept meaning to get to it,” Babe said.

  “I’m sure you did, sir.” Dominick smoothed his mustache. “The owner—”

  “Oh, he was mad,” the Babe said. “Hopping. I paid for it, though.”

  Dominick drummed his thick fingers on the bar. “So if it’s paid for, sir…”

  Babe wanted to bolt the bar. This was the part he hadn’t quite worked out in his head yet. He’d installed a new piano in both the rental cottage and the restored house on Dutton Road, but every time Helen looked at that new piano she’d look at Ruth in a way that
made him feel as attractive as a hog in its own filth. Since that new piano had taken residence in the house, neither of them had played it once.

  “I thought,” Ruth said, “if I could pull that piano from the lake, I—”

  “The pond, sir.”

  “The pond. If I could pull that piano back up and, you know, restore it, it would make a swell anniversary gift for my wife.”

  Dominick nodded. “And what anniversary would that be?”

  “Our fifth.”

  “Isn’t wood usually the appropriate gift?”

  Babe said nothing for a moment, thinking that one through.

  “Well, it’s made of wood.”

  “Point taken, sir.”

  Babe said, “And we’ve got some time. It’s not for six months, my anniversary.”

  Dominick poured them each another drink and raised his in toast. “To your unbridled optimism, Mr. Ruth. It’s what makes this country all that it is today.”

  They drank.

  “Have you ever seen what water does to wood? To ivory keys and wire and all those little delicate parts in a piano?”

  Babe nodded. “I know it won’t be easy.”

  “Easy, sir? I’m not sure it’ll be possible.” He leaned into the bar. “I have a cousin. He does some dredging. He’s worked the seas most of his life. What if we were to at least establish the location of the piano, how deep it actually is in the lake?”

  “The pond.”

  “The pond, sir. If we knew that, well, then we’d be somewhere, Mr. Ruth.”

  Ruth thought about it and nodded. “How much will this cost me?”

  “Couldn’t say without talking to my cousin, but it could be a bit more than a new piano. Could be less.” He shrugged and showed Ruth his palms. “Although, I make no guarantees as to the final fee.”

  “Of course.”

  Dominick took a piece of paper and wrote down a telephone number and handed it to Ruth. “That’s the number of the bar. I work seven days from noon to ten. Call me Thursday, sir, and I’ll have some details for you.”

  “Thanks.” Ruth pocketed the number as Dominick went back down the bar.

  He drank some more and smoked his cigar as a few more men came in and joined the two down at the other end of the bar and more rounds were purchased and toasts given to the tall, glamorous one, who was apparently giving some kind of speech soon at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church. Seemed like the tall man was big noise of a sort but Ruth still couldn’t place him. Didn’t matter—he felt warm here, cocooned. He loved a bar when the lights were dim and the wood was dark and the seats were covered in soft leather. The kids from this morning receded until they felt several weeks in his past, and if it was cold outside, you could only imagine it because you sure couldn’t feel it.

  Midautumn through winter was hard on him. He never knew what to do, couldn’t gauge what was expected of him when there were no balls to hit, no fellow players to jaw with. Every morning he was confronted with decisions—how to please Helen, what to eat, where to go, how to fill his time, what to wear. Come spring, he’d have a suitcase packed with his traveling clothes and most times he’d just have to step in front of his locker to know what he was going to wear; his uniform would be hanging there, fresh from the team laundry. His day would be mapped out for him—either a game or a practice or Bumpy Jordan, the Sox travel secretary, would point him to the line of cabs that would take him to the train that would carry him to whichever city they were going next. He wouldn’t have to think about meals because they’d all been arranged. Where he was going to sleep never crossed his mind—his name was already written in a hotel ledger, a bellman standing by to transport his bags. And at night, the boys were waiting in the bar and the spring leaked without complaint into summer and the summer unfurled in bright yellows and etched greens and the air smelled so good it could make you cry.

  Ruth didn’t know how it was with other men and their happiness, but he knew where his lay—in having the days mapped out for him, just as Brother Matthias used to do for him and all the other boys at St. Mary’s. Otherwise, facing the humdrum unknown of a normal domestic life, Ruth felt jumpy and mildly afraid.

  Not here, though, he thought, as the men in the bar began to spread out around him and a pair of large hands clapped his shoulders. He turned his head to see the big fellow who’d been down the end of the bar smiling at him.

  “Buy you a drink, Mr. Ruth?”

  The man came around to his side and Ruth again caught a whiff of the heroic from him, a sense of scale that couldn’t be contained by anything as small as a room.

  “Sure,” Ruth said. “You’re a Red Sox fan, then?”

  The man shook his head as he held up three fingers to Dominick, and his smaller friend joined him at the bar, pulling out a stool and dropping into it with the heaviness of a man twice his size.

  “Not particularly. I like sport but I’m not beholden to the idea of team allegiance.”

  Ruth said, “Then who do you root for when you’re at a game?”

  “Root?” the man said as their drinks arrived.

  “Cheer for?” Ruth said.

  The man flashed a brilliant smile. “Why, individual achievement, Mr. Ruth. The purity of a single play, a single display of adroit athleticism and coordination. The team is wonderful as a concept, I grant you. It suggests the brotherhood of man and unionism of a single goal. But if you look behind the veil, you see how it’s been stolen by corporate interests to sell an ideal that is the antithesis of everything this country claims to represent.”

  Ruth had lost him halfway through his spiel, but he raised his whiskey and gave what he hoped passed for a knowing nod and then he took a drink.

  The mousy guy leaned into the bar and looked past his friend at Ruth and mimicked Ruth’s nod. He tipped back his own drink. “He doesn’t have a fucking clue what you’re on about, Jack.”

  Jack placed his drink on the bar. “I apologize for Gene, Mr. Ruth. He lost his manners in the Village.”

  “What village?” Ruth said.

  Gene snickered.

  Jack gave Ruth a gentle smile. “Greenwich Village, Mr. Ruth.”

  “It’s in New York,” Gene said.

  “I know where it is, bub,” Ruth said, and he knew that as big as Jack was, he’d be no match for Babe’s strength if he decided to push him aside and tear that mousy hair off his friend’s head.

  “Oh,” Gene said, “the Emperor Jones is angry.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Gentlemen,” Jack said. “Let’s remember we’re all brothers. Our struggle is a shared one. Mr. Ruth, Babe,” Jack said, “I’m something of a traveler. You name the countries of this world, there’s probably a sticker on my suitcase for every one.”

  “You some kind of salesman?” Babe took a pickled egg from the jar and popped it in his mouth.

  Jack’s eyes brightened. “You could say that.”

  Gene said, “You honestly have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”

  “Sure I do, Pops.” Babe wiped his hands off each other. “He’s Jack. You’re Jill.”

  “Gene,” the mousy one said. “Gene O’Neill, in point of fact. And this is Jack Reed you’re talking to.”

  Babe kept his eyes on the mouse. “I’m sticking with ‘Jill.’”

  Jack laughed and clapped them both on their backs. “As I was saying, Babe, I’ve been all over. I’ve seen athletic contests in Greece, in Finland, in Italy and France. I once saw a polo match in Russia where no small number of the participants were trampled by their own horses. There’s nothing purer or more inspirational, truly, than to see men involved in contest. But like most things that are pure, it gets sullied by big money and big business and put to the service of more nefarious purpose.”

  Babe smiled. He liked the way Reed talked, even if he couldn’t understand what he meant.

  Another man, a thin man with a profile that was hungry and sharp, joined them and said, “This is the slugger?” r />
  “Indeed,” Jack said. “Babe Ruth himself.”

  “Jim Larkin,” the man said, shaking Babe’s hand. “I apologize, but I don’t follow your game.”

  “No apologies necessary, Jim.” Babe gave him a firm shake.

  “What my compatriot here is saying,” Jim said, “is that the future opiate of the masses is not religion, Mr. Ruth, it’s entertainment.”

  “That so?” Ruth wondered if Stuffy McInnis was home right now, if he’d answer the phone, maybe meet Babe in the city somewhere so they could get a steak and talk baseball and women.

  “Do you know why baseball leagues are sprouting up all over the country? At every mill and every shipyard? Why just about every company has a workers’ team?”

  Ruth said, “Sure. It’s fun.”

  “Well, it is,” Jack said. “I’ll grant you. But to put a finer point on it, companies like fielding baseball teams because it promotes company unity.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Babe said, and Gene snorted again.

  Larkin leaned in close again and Babe wanted to lean back from his gin-breath. “And it promotes ‘Americanization,’ for lack of a better word, among the immigrant workers.”

  “But most of all,” Jack said, “if you’re working seventy-five hours a week and playing baseball another fifteen or twenty, guess what you’re probably too tired to do?”

  Babe shrugged.

  “Strike, Mr. Ruth,” Larkin said. “You’re too tired to strike or even think about your rights as a worker.”

  Babe rubbed his chin so they’d believe he was thinking about the idea. Truth was, though, he was just hoping they’d go away.

  “To the worker!” Jack shouted, raising his glass.

  The other men—and Ruth noticed there were nine or ten of them now—raised their glasses and shouted back, “To the worker!”

  Everyone took a strong slug of liquor, including Ruth.

  “To the revolution!” Larkin shouted.

  Dominick said, “Now now, gents,” but he was lost in the clamor as the men rose on their seats.

  “Revolution!”

  “To the new proletariat!”