The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)

  Jamesie put the book aside, consulted the batting averages in the Courier, and reread Ding Bell. Then, not waiting for dinner and certain to hear about it at supper, he ate a peanut butter sandwich with catsup on it, and left by the back door. He went down the alley calling for Francis Murgatroyd. He got up on the Murgatroyd gate and swung—the death-defying trapeze act at the circus—until Francis came down the walk.

  “Hello, Blackie Humphrey,” Jamesie said tantalizingly.

  “Who’s Blackie Humphrey?”

  “You know who Blackie Humphrey is all right.”

  “Aw, Jamesie, cut it out.”

  “And you want me to throw the World Series!”

  “Baseball Bill!”

  “In the World Series. It came yesterday.”

  “Can I read it?”

  Jamesie spoke in a hushed voice. “So you’re Blackie Humphrey?”

  “All right. But I get to read it next.”

  “So you want me to throw the World Series, Blackie. Is that it? Say you do.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Ask me again. Call me Bill.”

  “Bill, I want you to throw the World Series. Will you, Bill?”

  “I might.” But that was just to fool Blackie. Bill tried to keep his towering rage in check while feigning an interest in the nefarious plot. “Why do you want me to throw it, Blackie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you know. You’re a dirty crook and you’ve got a lot of dough bet on the other team.”

  “Uh, huh.”

  “Go ahead. Tell me that.”

  While Blackie unfolded the criminal plan Bill smiled at him in his friendly, boyish fashion.

  “And who’s behind this, Blackie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Say it’s the powerful gambling syndicate.”

  “It’s them.”

  “Ah, ha! Knock the ash off your cigar.”

  “Have I got one?”

  “Yes, and you’ve got strong drink on your breath, too.”

  “Whew!”

  Blackie should have fixed him with his small, piglike eyes.

  “Fix me with your small, piglike eyes.”

  “Wait a minute, Jamesie!”

  “Bill. Go ahead. Fix me.”

  “O.K. But you don’t get to be Bill all the time.”

  “Now blow your foul breath in my face.”

  “There!”

  “Now ask me to have a cigar. Go ahead.”

  Blackie was offering Bill a cigar, but Bill knew it was to get him to break training and refused it.

  “I see through you, Blackie.” No, that was wrong. He had to conceal his true thoughts and let Blackie play him for a fool. Soon enough his time would come and . . . “Thanks for the cigar, Blackie,” he said. “I thought it was a cheap one. Thanks, I’ll smoke it later.”

  “I paid a quarter for it.”

  “Hey, that’s too much, Francis!”

  “Well, if I’m the head of the powerful—”

  Mr Murgatroyd came to the back door and told Francis to get ready.

  “I can’t go to the game, Jamesie,” Francis said. “I have to caddy for him.”

  Jamesie got a ride with the calliope when it had to stop at the corner for the light. The calliope was not playing now, but yesterday it had roamed the streets, all red and gold and glittering like a hussy among the pious, black Fords parked on the Square, blaring and showing off, with a sign, Jayville vs. Beardstown.

  The ball park fence was painted a swampy green except for an occasional new board. Over the single ticket window cut in the fence hung a sign done in the severe black and white railroad manner, “Home of the Jayville Independents,” but everybody called them the “Indees.”

  Jamesie bought a bottle of Green River out of his savings and made the most of it, swallowing it in sips, calling upon his willpower under the sun. He returned the bottle and stood for a while by the ticket window making designs in the dust with the corrugated soles of his new tennis shoes. Ding Bell, with a pretty lady on his arm and carrying the black official scorebook, passed inside without paying, and joked about it.

  The Beardstown players arrived from sixty miles away with threatening cheers. Their chartered bus stood steaming and dusty from the trip. The players wore gray suits with “Barons” written across their chests and had the names of sponsors on their backs—Palms Café, Rusty’s Wrecking, Coca-Cola.

  Jamesie recognized some of the Barons but put down a desire to speak to them.

  The last man to leave the bus, Jamesie thought, must be Guez, the new pitcher imported from East St Louis for the game. Ding Bell had it in the Dope Box that “Saliva Joe” was one of the few spitters left in the business, had been up in the Three Eye a few years, was a full-blooded Cuban, and ate a bottle of aspirins a game, just like candy.

  The dark pitcher’s fame was too much for Jamesie. He walked alongside Guez. He smelled the salt and pepper of the gray uniform, saw the scarred plate on the right toe, saw the tears in the striped stockings—the marks of bravery or moths— heard the distant chomp of tobacco being chewed, felt—almost—the iron drape of the flannel, and was reduced to friendliness with the pitcher, the enemy.

  “Are you a real Cuban?”

  Guez looked down, rebuking Jamesie with a brief stare, and growled, “Go away.”

  Jamesie gazed after the pitcher. He told himself that he hated Guez—that’s what he did, hated him! But it didn’t do much good. He looked around to see if anybody had been watching, but nobody had, and he wanted somebody his size to vanquish—somebody who might think Guez was as good as Lefty. He wanted to bet a million dollars on Lefty against Guez, but there was nobody to take him up on it.

  The Indees began to arrive in ones and twos, already in uniform but carrying their spikes in their hands. Jamesie spoke to all of them except J. G. Nickerson, the manager. J. G. always glared at kids. He thought they were stealing his baseballs and laughing about it behind his back. He was a great one for signaling with a score card from the bench, like Connie Mack, and Ding Bell had ventured to say that managers didn’t come any brainier than Jayville’s own J. G. Nickerson, even in the big time. But if there should be a foul ball, no matter how tight the game or crucial the situation, J. G. would leap up, straining like a bird dog, and try to place it, waving the bat boy on without taking his eyes off the spot where it disappeared over the fence or in the weeds. That was why they called him the Foul Ball.

  The Petersons—the old man at the wheel, a red handkerchief tied tight enough around his neck to keep his head on, and the sons, all players, Big Pete, Little Pete, Middle Pete, and Extra Pete—roared up with their legs hanging out of the doorless Model T and the brass radiator boiling over.

  The old man ran the Model T around in circles, damning it for a runaway horse, and finally got it parked by the gate.

  “Hold ’er, Knute!” he cackled.

  The boys dug him in the ribs, tickling him, and were like puppies that had been born bigger than their father, jollying him through the gate, calling him Barney Oldfield.

  Lefty came.

  “Hi, Lefty,” Jamesie said.

  “Hi, kid,” Lefty said. He put his arm around Jamesie and took him past the ticket taker.

  “It’s all right, Mac,” he said.

  “Today’s the day, Lefty,” Mac said. “You can do it, Lefty.”

  Jamesie and Lefty passed behind the grandstand. Jamesie saw Lefty’s father, a skinny, brown-faced man in a yellow straw katy.

  “There’s your dad, Lefty.”

  Lefty said, “Where?” but looked the wrong way and walked a little faster.

  At the end of the grandstand Lefty stopped Jamesie. “My old man is out of town, kid. Got that?”

  Jamesie did not see how this could be. He knew Lefty’s father. Lefty’s father had a brown face and orange gums. But Lefty ought to know his own father. “I guess it just looked like him, Lefty,” Jamesie said.

  Lefty took his han
d off Jamesie’s arm and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, kid. It just looked like him on account of he’s out of town—in Peoria.”

  Jamesie could still feel the pressure of Lefty’s fingers on his arm. They came out on the diamond at the Indees bench near first base. The talk quieted down when Lefty appeared. Everybody thought he had a big head, but nobody could say a thing against his pitching record, it was that good. The scout for the New York Yankees had invited him only last Sunday to train with them next spring. The idea haunted the others. J. G. had shut up about the beauties of teamwork.

  J. G. was counting the balls when Jamesie went to the suitcase to get one for Lefty. J. G. snapped the lid down.

  “It’s for Lefty!”

  “Huh!”

  “He wants it for warm up.”

  “Did you tell this kid to get you a ball, Left?”

  “Should I bring my own?” Lefty said.

  J. G. dug into the suitcase for a ball, grunting, “I only asked him.” He looked to Jamesie for sympathy. He considered the collection of balls and finally picked out a fairly new one.

  “Lefty, he likes ’em brand new,” Jamesie said.

  “Who’s running this club?” J. G. bawled. But he threw the ball back and broke a brand new one out of its box and tissue paper. He ignored Jamesie’s ready hand and yelled to Lefty going out to the bull pen, “Coming at you, Left,” and threw it wild.

  Lefty let the ball bounce through his legs, not trying for it. “Nice throw,” he said.

  Jamesie retrieved the ball for Lefty. They tossed it back and forth, limbering up, and Jamesie aped Lefty’s professional indolence.

  When Bugs Bidwell, Lefty’s battery mate, appeared with his big mitt, Jamesie stood aside and buttoned his glove back on his belt. Lefty shed his red blanket coat with the leathersleeves and gave it to Jamesie for safekeeping. Jamesie folded it gently over his arm, with the white chenille “J” showing out. He took his stand behind Bugs to get a good look at Lefty’s stuff.

  Lefty had all his usual stuff—the fast one with the two little hops in it, no bigger than a pea; his slow knuckler that looked like a basketball, all the stitches standing still and staring you in the face; his sinker that started out high like a wild pitch, then dipped a good eight inches and straightened out for a called strike. But something was wrong—Lefty with nothing to say, no jokes, no sudden whoops, was not himself. Only once did he smile at a girl in the bleachers and say she was plenty . . . and sent a fast one smacking into Bugs’s mitt for what he meant.

  That, for a moment, was the Lefty that Jamesie’s older cousins knew about. They said a nice kid like Jamesie ought to be kept away from him, even at the ball park. Jamesie was always afraid it would get back to Lefty that the cousins thought he was poor white trash, or that he would know it in some other way, as when the cousins passed him on the street and looked the other way. He was worried, too, about what Lefty might think of his Sunday clothes, the snow-white blouse, the floppy sailor tie, the soft linen pants, the sissy clothes. His tennis shoes—sneakers, he ought to say—were all right, but not the golf stockings that left his knees bare, like a rich kid’s. The tough guys, because they were tough or poor—he didn’t know which—wore socks, not stockings, and they wore them rolled down slick to their ankles.

  Bugs stuck his mitt with the ball in it under his arm and got out his Beechnut. He winked at Jamesie and said, “Chew?”

  Jamesie giggled. He liked Bugs. Bugs, on loan from the crack State Hospital team, was all right—nothing crazy about him; he just liked it at the asylum, he said, the big grounds and lots of cool shade, and he was not required to work or take walks like the regular patients. He was the only Indee on speaking terms with Lefty.

  Turning to Lefty, Bugs said, “Ever seen this Cuban work?”

  “Naw.”

  “I guess he’s got it when he’s right.”

  “That so?” Lefty caught the ball with his bare hand and spun it back to Bugs. “Well, all I can promise you is a no-hit game. It’s up to you clowns to get the runs.”

  “And me hitting a lousy .211.”

  “All you got to do is hold me. Anyhow what’s the Foul Ball want for his five bucks—Mickey Cochrane?”

  “Yeah, Left.”

  “I ought to quit him.”

  “Ain’t you getting your regular fifteen?”

  “Yeah, but I ought to quit. The Yankees want me. Is my curve breaking too soon?”

  “It’s right in there, Left.”

  It was a pitchers’ battle until the seventh inning. Then the Indees pushed a run across.

  The Barons got to Lefty for their first hit in the seventh, and when the next man bunted, Lefty tried to field it instead of letting Middle Pete at third have it, which put two on with none out. Little Pete threw the next man out at first, the only play possible, and the runners advanced to second and third. The next hitter hammered a line drive to Big Pete at first, and Big Pete tried to make it two by throwing to second, where the runner was off, but it was too late and the runner on third scored on the play. J. G. from the bench condemned Big Pete for a dumb Swede. The next man popped to short center.

  Jamesie ran out with Lefty’s jacket. “Don’t let your arm get cold, Lefty.”

  “Some support I got,” Lefty said.

  “Whyn’t you leave me have that bunt, Lefty?” Middle Pete said, and everybody knew he was right.

  “Two of them pitches was hit solid,” Big Pete said. “Good anywhere.”

  “Now, boys,” J. G. said.

  “Aw, dry up,” Lefty said, grabbing a blade of grass to chew. “I ought to quit you bums.”

  Pid Kirby struck out for the Indees, but Little Pete walked, and Middle Pete advanced him to second on a long fly to left. Then Big Pete tripled to the weed patch in center, clear up against the Chevrolet sign, driving in Little Pete. Guez whiffed Kelly Larkin, retiring the side, and the Indees were leading the Barons 2 to 1.

  The first Baron to bat in the eighth had J. G. frantic with fouls. The umpire was down to his last ball and calling for more. With trembling fingers J. G. unwrapped new balls. He had the bat boy and the bat boy’s assistant hunting for them behind the grandstand. When one fell among the automobiles parked near first, he started to go and look for himself, but thought of Jamesie and sent him instead. “If anybody tries to hold out on you, come and tell me.”

  After Jamesie found the ball he crept up behind a familiar blue Hupmobile, dropping to his knees when he was right under Uncle Pat’s elbow, and then popping up to scare him.

  “Look who’s here,” his cousin said. It had not been Uncle Pat’s elbow at all, but Gabriel’s. Uncle Pat, who had never learned to drive, sat on the other side to be two feet closer to the game.

  Jamesie stepped up on the running board, and Gabriel offered him some popcorn.

  “So you’re at the game, Jamesie,” Uncle Pat said, grinning as though it were funny. “Gabriel said he thought that was you out there.”

  “Where’d you get the cap, Jamesie?” Gabriel said.

  “Lefty. The whole team got new ones. And if they win today J. G. says they’re getting whole new uniforms.”

  “Not from me,” Uncle Pat said, looking out on the field. “Who the thunder’s wearing my suit today?”

  “Lee Coles, see?” Gabriel said, pointing to the player. Lee’s back—Mallon’s Grocery—was to them.

  Uncle Pat, satisfied, slipped a bottle of near beer up from the floor to his lips and tipped it up straight, which explained to Jamesie the foam on his mustache.

  “You went and missed me again this week,” Uncle Pat said broodingly. “You know what I’m going to do, Jamesie?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to stop taking your old Liberty magazine if you don’t bring me one first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I will.” He would have to bring Uncle Pat his own free copy and erase the crossword puzzle. He never should have sold out on the street. That was how you lost your regular customers.


  Uncle Pat said, “This makes the second time I started in to read a serial and had this happen to me.”

  “Is it all right if the one I bring you tomorrow has got ‘Sample Copy’ stamped on it?”

  “That’s all right with me, Jamesie, but I ought to get it for nothing.” Uncle Pat swirled the last inch of beer in the bottle until it was all suds.

  “I like the Post,” Gabriel said. “Why don’t you handle the Post?”

  “They don’t need anybody now.”

  “What he ought to handle,” Uncle Pat said, “is the Country Gentleman.”

  “How’s the Rosebud coming, Jamesie?” Gabriel asked. “But I don’t want to buy any.”

  Uncle Pat and Gabriel laughed at him.

  Why was that funny? He’d had to return eighteen boxes and tell them he guessed he was all through being the local representative. But why was that so funny?

  “Did you sell enough to get the bicycle, Jamesie?”

  “No.” He had sold all the Rosebud salve he could, but not nearly enough to get the Ranger bicycle. He had to be satisfied with the Eveready flashlight.

  “Well, I got enough of that Rosebud salve now to grease the Hup,” Gabriel said. “Or to smear all over me the next time I swim the English Channel—with Gertrude Ederle. It ought to keep the fishes away.”

  “It smells nice,” Uncle Pat said. “But I got plenty.”

  Jamesie felt that they were protecting themselves against him.

  “I sent it all back anyway,” he said, but that was not true; there were six boxes at home in his room that he had to keep in order to get the flashlight. Why was that the way it always worked out? Same way with the flower seeds. Why was it that whenever he got a new suit at Meyer Brothers they weren’t giving out ball bats or compasses? Why was it he only won a half pound of bacon at he carnival, never a Kewpie doll or an electric fan? Why did he always get tin whistles and crickets in the Cracker Jack, never a puzzle, a ring, or a badge? And one time he had got nothing! Why was it that the five-dollar bill he found on South Diamond Street belonged to Mrs Hutchinson? But he had found a quarter in the dust at the circus that nobody claimed.