Elsa went back to putting up her hair, watching the girl in the mirror. She was a rather helpless, pretty thing, and obviously unhappy. But her unhappiness was obscurely annoying too. There was the edge of spite in it, the eagerness to blame someone else for her misery, that would have made one want to shake her if she had been one’s own. She turned and faced the girl squarely. “Is it because you’re in love with Chet?” she said. “Don’t your family like him?”
“Oh, they like him all right.”
“But you are in love with him,” Elsa said.
Laura nodded, keeping her head down.
“How does Chet feel about it?”
Laura nodded again, unwilling to meet Elsa’s eyes.
Elsa sighed. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t go together, as long as you aren’t foolish about it. When you’re both old enough to get married you probably won’t even like each other any more, but if you do nobody will try to stop you from marrying in a few years.”
Laura lifted tragic eyes, but said nothing, and Elsa frowned. “You children aren’t serious, now?”
Her eyes full of utterly disproportionate terror, Laura pushed herself back on the bed. “I ... that is ... I don’t know ...”
Elsa took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Good heavens, don’t be afraid of me! I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to be sure you and Chet weren’t going to be foolish about waiting. Waiting isn’t too hard, when you can see each other all the time. Nobody’s trying to keep you apart, child.”
“Oh Mrs. Mason!” Laura said, and began to cry. “I’m so unhappy!”
Elsa stood waiting, but the girl said no more, so Elsa said it herself, the words heavy and sodden and hard to lift. “You and Chet haven’t got in trouble, have you?”
“No,” Laura said. “Oh no, nothing like that.”
“Well then, everything will turn out all right. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you. You shouldn’t be unhappy, at your age.”
But she was thinking as they went downstairs that Laura had been playing some kind of double game, had been trying to say something she was afraid to say, and at the same time had been angling for sympathy, trying to ingratiate herself by appearing miserable and picked on, as if to justify that other thing that she hadn’t dared to say.
Poor child, she thought automatically. Kids in love gave themselves endless troubles for nothing. But she didn’t like the idea of Chet’s being involved with this girl as deeply as he apparently was. He was too young, he didn’t know enough. She had hardly phrased her automatic pity for Laura before the phrase had twisted itself in her mind into something else: Poor Chet.
She watched Chet at dinner, kept glancing up to intercept looks between him and Laura. They did not act like kids out for a good time. They were sober, their eyes and their occasionally-touching hands eloquent of secrets. The thing was obviously serious, but how serious it was hard to tell. But two children like that! she thought. Chet was only seventeen. Still, he was in deep. He wasn’t full of horseplay the way he ordinarily was, he hardly laughed at all except with his sly, sidelong look at Laura. There was something brooding and almost deadly in the way the two looked at each other.
Oh Lord! she said, why are they so intent on ruining their own lives?
After dinner Bo was playing the slot machines while Laura and Bruce watched, and she crooked her finger at Chet. As they walked away she felt Laura’s eyes on her back. Everything that happened, the slightest incident, was significant to those two, pertinent to some guarded secret of their own.
“Let’s sit down,” she said. The mezzanine was empty. The other guests were all out on the porch, their voices a dim buzzing through the doors. Finding it hard to begin, not knowing exactly what she had brought him up here to say to him, Elsa took his hand.
“You’ve got paws just like your father‘s,” she said. “It doesn’t seem any time at all since they were making mud pies.”
Chet said nothing. He waited.
“Chet,” she said. “What about Laura?”
She could feel the stiffness of his body through his hand. His eyes were veiled as if she were an enemy. “What about her?”
“She talked to me a little before dinner, up in my room.”
Instantly there was life in the veiled eyes. “What did she say?”
“What could she have said?”
The eyes went dull again. “I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged slightly.
“She said she was in love with you,” Elsa said.
Chet tried to laugh. “Good,” he said. “She never told me that.”
“Oh Chet!” his mother said, and stood up impatiently. “You needn’t try to duck and hide from me. I just want to talk to you openly and see if I can’t give you some good advice.”
“People are always awful free with advice,” Chet said.
“Have I been?”
“You’re always worrying about what time I come in, and stuff like that. You can’t get over thinking of me as a kid.”
“I was thinking more about your health than anything else.”
“Oh, my health! I’m healthy as a horse. No guy wants to be mothered and babied around. I’ve got to grow up sometime.”
“Not too soon,” she said softly. “Not so soon you spoil your whole life by it. I’m not trying to hold you back, Chet. You’re old for your age, in some ways. But you’re still only seventeen, and you can ruin your life by getting too serious with a girl too soon. I’m just asking you to remember that you aren’t really a man till you’re twenty-one. Lots of boys aren’t till later than that.”
His ears were pink, his brows pulled down in a black frown. At least she had got the mask off him, she thought wearily. But it didn’t do any good.
“I can look after myself,” he said. “I know enough to come in out of the rain.” He said it angrily, but he did not quite meet her eyes, and she read him as if he were an eight-year-old trying to bluster his way out of trouble. Underneath that anger he was uncertain and scared. He knew he was in deep.
“We’re getting altogether too serious,” she said lightly. “I didn’t bring you up here to croak at you. I just wanted to remind you to keep yourself free and clean. If you want to be a ball player you’ll have to be free for a few years, Chet.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know what got you thinking I wasn’t going to be.”
“Laura.”
“Oh,” he said. He looked past her, the dull and sullen look on his mouth. “Shall we go on down again?” he said.
For a moment Elsa looked at him feeling that she wanted to cry. He was just like Bo, as stubborn and immovable as a wall, as unwilling to admit a mistake. What he did was right. It had to be. Out of her anger and irritation came a curious desire to reach out and hug him, but that would have been as embarrassing and bothersome to him as her attempt to give advice. She turned and went downstairs. She did not want to be an interfering mother, but she was determined that if there was anything she could do to prevent his making a fool of himself she would do it, short of actual compulsion.
“What about speaking to Bill Talbot about Chet?” she asked Bo out on the porch later. “Couldn’t you get him a chance to try out with the Bees? He’s been doing so well out in the Copper League.”
“He isn’t ready for any Double-A league,” Bo said. “When’s he’s ready, they’ll be after him themselves. Besides, you don’t try out in the middle of the summer. They look over the young guys in the spring, in training camp.”
“But ...”
“What do you want him pushed so fast for?” Bo said, irritated. “Let him grow up a little. He’d just blow his chance.”
“Bo,” she said, “I wish you’d talk to Bill, just the same.”
His brows drew down, and he turned to stare. “What’s on your mind?”
With her eyes she indicated Chet and Laura leaning over the balcony rail. Chet was pointing at something, and Laura was bent close to him, trying to see. “I think it w
ould do Chet a lot of good to get away from Salt Lake for a while,” Elsa said. “Bill’s a good friend of yours. He’d do it for you as a favor. Even if we had to pay Chet’s expenses ...”
Bo jerked his head at the oblivious two. “You think ... ?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid they’re both pretty far gone.”
“At seventeen!” he said, and snorted through his nose.
“It doesn’t do any good to talk to him,” Elsa said. “I’ve tried. If you tried you’d just make him bull-headed. But if you could get Bill to let him go along with the team, maybe pitch for batting practice or something ...”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “Well, I’ll see. But I wouldn’t expect too much. Bill’s the best judge of when he wants to look anybody over.”
They looked at each other, and both laughed. It was funny, in a way, how they schemed on one end of a balcony while Chet and Laura plotted heaven only knew what on the other. “I guess they never get too old to need taking care of,” Elsa said. “How’s business going?”
“Yesterday,” Bo said, “I bought another thousand bucks worth of U. S. Steel.”
“How much does that make?”
He winked. “Mama,” he said, “we may not be as rich as we’d be if we played the market right, but we’ve got eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of stock in that safety deposit box, and we own every nickel’s worth of it.”
“Eighteen thousand,” Elsa said. It seemed an enormous sum.
“I figured up our assets the other day,” Bo said. “We’re worth pretty close to thirty thousand, counting everything. Give me time to multiply that by ten and we’ll retire.”
Elsa smiled. “Remember when you first started you said you’d make a few trips and get a stake and get into some business. Then you got knocked over and had to make it up. Then Heimie spoiled things for you in Great Falls and we had to make that up. But you always said when you got ten thousand dollars ahead you’d get out of this business, Bo.”
“You know what the interest on ten thousand would amount to?” Bo said. “Even if you had it in seven percent preferred stock you’d only get seven hundred a year off it. How long could you live on seven hundred?”
“But you’ve got more than ten thousand. You’ve got two or three times that much.”
“You never figure right when you’re down,” Bo said. “Ten thousand looks like a million from where we used to be. But you can’t get into any kind of business with only that kind of capital. You got to put up dough.”
“But you’ll have to get out sometime,” she said. “It isn’t fair to the kids. Bruce’ll be going to college this fall. What if you got into trouble and all his friends knew what you did? What if all Chet’s friends knew it?”
“What do you want?” he said, eyeing her somberly. “Want me to sit on my tail and let what we’ve got dribble away?”
“You know what I want. I want you to find some business that we don’t have to be ashamed of. The kids feel it, Bo. They don’t like to bring their friends around the house. They have to lie about what you do. It isn’t fair to them.”
“Well, I’m keeping my eyes open,” he said. “You can’t just rush into a thing blind.”
He moved impatiently and stood up at the rail to watch two boys ride hell-for-leather around the trail and out of sight into the woods. “Ho hum,” he said. “Here I thought you’d be excited at the idea of another thousand socked away.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” she said, her eyes on his, “that there are things that would make me feel better than any amount of money?”
6
The game had started when Bo got there. He slipped the usher a half dollar and moved down to a box on the first base line. At the end of the fourth Bill Talbot came out of the dugout to take a turn coaching at first, and Bo waved to him. After the third out Bill came over.
“How’s tricks?” he said.
“Can’t complain. Looks like you got a ball club this year.”
“They look pretty good, don’t they?” Bill said. “You never saw a bunch of guys hit like these kids. If we had the pitching we’d be in first place by ten games.”
“You’re only three games off the pace. You can make that up.”
“I got my fingers crossed,” Bill said. “Anything stirring in your league?”
“Nothing except a favor I want to ask. Maybe you can’t do it, I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“You know that kid of mine.”
“The pitcher? I been seeing his name in the Copper League. Doing all right.”
“Doing pretty good,” Bo said. “I went out and caught him in the back yard one day. He’s got a fast one that whistles, and a pretty good hook.”
Bill bowed himself to spit carefully in the dust and then erase the spit with his spikes. “What’s the favor?”
“I was wondering if you could take the kid along on a road trip.”
Bill shook his head. “Got my quota. We can’t have any extras on the payroll after the middle of May.”
“Trouble is,” Bo said, and bit the end off a cigar, “trouble is, the damn kid’s got a crush on a girl and I’d like to shake him loose till he cools off, and there’s nothing he’d leave her for but maybe baseball.”
Bill opened his mouth to laugh, raised his cap to cool his bald head, slipped it back on again. “You don’t want me to put him on the team then.”
“He isn’t ready for that, hell no.”
“Tell you what,” Talbot said. “Would he come as batboy, do you think?”
“I don’t know. I should think so.”
“He wouldn’t get any money, only expenses. But you could tell him I’ll be looking him over. He could work out with the boys, nobody’d fuss about that.”
“I should think that would do it,” Bo said. He lighted the cigar and chuckled out a cloud of blue smoke. “It would do him good to be a batboy. He thinks he’s ready to pitch to Ruth right now.”
“Tell him to come down and see me,” Bill said. “I’d like to get a longer look at him, for a fact. We need pitchers so bad that even a green one with stuff looks pretty interesting. He might set himself up for a tryout next spring.”
“Good,” Bo said. “You leave next Monday?”
“Gone for two weeks, then back for two, then gone for three. He could go this trip or wait till the August one. What about his smelter job?”
“If I know him,” Bo said, “he’ll throw that overboard in a minute. And the sooner he’s got out of here the better.”
He watched Bill go back to the coach’s box at first, and after another inning he rose and went home. He felt so good about the way he had used his influence to give Chet a chance and at the same time to get him away from Laura that he got out a bottle of Scotch and wrapped it up and put it aside for Chet to take down to Bill when he went.
His slight fear that Chet would stick up his nose at a batboy’s job lasted only the first minute of their conversation. Chet saw the possibilities all right.
“Jeez, let me at him!” he said. “Did he say I could work out with them?”
“Yeah. He wants a look at your stuff. But he has to put you on as batboy because his quota’s full. You keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and try training a little and you might get a break out of this, boy. Bill’s short of pitchers.”
Chet looked up at the ceiling and cracked his knuckles together. “Maybe somebody’ll get hurt and they’ll have to put me in a game,” he said.
“You won’t get in any games,” Bo said shortly. “You’re not on the team, for one thing. For another, you wouldn’t last a third of an inning. But you might learn something.”
“If I don’t I’ll kiss a pig,” Chet said. “Can I take the car now?”
Bo laughed. “Don’t let any grass grow under you. Yeah, if you get it back here by seven.”
“Okay.”
“What’ll you do about the smelter?”
“That can fry,” Chet said. “I can’t pas
s this up just to pitch in that league.”
“Then what’ll you do all winter? Sit around on your tail?”
“That shows how much you know about it,” Chet said. “I already lined up a job at the International Harvester. I’m going to play basketball for ‘em this winter.”
“Okay, okay,” Bo said. The kid had enough ambition. Wean him away from his Laura and he’d do all right. “You better get along,” he said. “Give this bottle to Bill.”
Chet took it, stood in the doorway jingling loose change in his pocket, looked up once, then out the door. “Well, thanks, Pa,” he said uncomfortably, and went out.
He was back promptly in an hour. “All fixed,” he said, and took a basketball shot at the top of a lamp with a sofa cushion. The lamp teetered and started to fall, and he leaped to grab it. “Caught him and half the team at dinner,” he said. “Bill said I could stick around till the end of the season if I wanted.”
“I never saw anybody quite so overjoyed at getting a job as batboy,” Bo said.
“Stick around, boy,” Chet said. “I’ll be on that team when it starts training next spring.”
A few minutes later Bo heard him talking on the telephone in the hall. He held his paper still, listening. “Yeah,” Chet was saying. “Bill wants to look me over this summer. No fooling. Yeah, Monday night. No, just to look me over, sort of a preliminary tryout. That’s what I was thinking, you bet your life. I’ll do what I can. Old John can’t go on catching forever. His legs are all shot. I don’t know why not. I’ll sure talk you up, anyway. Tell ‘em I can’t pitch to anybody but you ...”
Bo waggled the paper and grinned to himself. Big Shot, he said softly. The batboy getting jobs for his friends. He looked at his watch and got up. That half case was due down on South Temple at seven thirty.
After his father had gone out Chet wandered restlessly around the house. Jeezie Kly, it was all right. Two months with the Bees, sitting in the dugout with them, eating with them in diners and hotels, meeting players from all the other clubs, guys like Lefty O‘Doul and Chief Bender and Walter Mails. There was the guy with the fast one. Old Bill Talbot was no bush leaguer, for that matter. He’d been one of the best outfielders in the business in his day, and he was still good enough at forty to hit over three hundred and play a good left field more than half the games. He’d been up in the big time a long while, and he knew them all, Ruth and Hornsby and Walter Johnson and Grover Alexander and Casey Stengel and Sisler and Collins and all of them. You ought to be able to learn plenty just sitting and listening to Bill.