Brittle Innings

20

On the Monday before a trip to Opelika and LaGrange, Jumbo came upstairs to find me writing down my stats from the Eufaula series and weighing them against my teammates’. It embarrassed me for him to see me doing this-I still had a sky-high batting average and came down harder on my teammates than on myself. I couldn’t quibble with Jumbo’s stats, though. He’d played great on the road-my notebook said so.

“Daniel.”

I slammed my notebook shut on my knees.

“Some of my library books fall due this week. Go with me to return them.” Jumbo packed a laundry bag with books.

I turned an imaginary steering wheel. Would we drive? Jumbo smiled, sort of, and walked two fingers over the quilt on his mattress. Uh-uh, I thought.

“Please come. The heat here’s barbarous and the light at your cot poor.”

The heat everywhere in Highbridge was barbarous-unless you went to a refrigerated movie show or bowling alley. A walk to the library in Alligator Park would push our temperatures to sunstroke levels. On the other hand, an invite from Jumbo came round about as often as Halley’s comet.

“I’ll help you acquire a library card,” Jumbo said. “I’m on very good terms with Mrs Hocking, the librarian.”

I agreed to go. And, yes, we walked.

In the farmer’s market, people shouted at Jumbo: “Way to gig them Mudcats, Jumbo!” and “Hit me a rainmaker gainst them lousy Gendarmes!” And so on.

A man at a produce stall asked Jumbo to autograph one of his watermelons with a grease pencil. He took my signature on a big yellow squash, but only after Jumbo told him my batting average and sold me as a future big leaguer.

Three colored boys-one turned out to be Euclid -dogged our heels all the way to the edge of Alligator Park, where Negroes seemed to be forbidden unless they were using hedge clippers or pushing a pram with a pink-skinned kid in it.

The Alligator Park branch of the Highbridge library system was a red brick building not far from the church Mister JayMac, Miss Giselle, and a few of the Hellbenders sometimes attended. It had a pot-bellied white portico and windows separated by rose trellises or well-trimmed snowball shrubs. In Tenkiller, this branch would’ve held every book in town-maybe the whole county-with space left over for a LaSalle showroom.

Mrs Hocking surprised me too. She didn’t have blue hair or a squint or blocky black shoes with ankle straps. She had a pretty face, a plumpish body with flying-squirrel flaps on her upper arms, and a smile that made my own mouth muscles ache. I guessed her age as fifty-plus. She greeted Jumbo like he was an electrocuted loved one brought back to life-I mean, she was overjoyed.

“It’s so good to see you, Mr Clerval! One of the titles you asked me to put on reserve has just come in! Now I won’t have to send you a postal notice!”

Despite being on very good terms with Mrs Hocking, Jumbo looked startled. He unpacked his books on the central desk and kept his mouth shut, a rebuke for all the fuss.

Mrs Hocking’s young assistant hovered at the far end of the desk, eyeballing Jumbo and me the way she would’ve a couple of prison escapees.

“But you’ve only had these books out once!” Mrs Hocking thumbed through her card bin. “You could’ve renewed them!”

“Yessum,” Jumbo said. “But to what end?”

“Why, to give yourself time to read them all.”

“I have read them all.”

“Oh. Then you’re an awfully resourceful reader. You must have formidable powers of concentration.”

“Which of my reserve titles has come in?”

“Why, uh, this one, Mr Clerval.” Mrs Hocking picked a small book out of a nearby stacking cart. “It’s very popular just now. Mr Salmon, its last reader, checked it out two days ago and brought it back just this morning. Perhaps you and he should meet. You have much in common, including-”

“Please, Mrs Hocking, hold it for me here until I’ve made my other selections.”

“Of course. Pleased to. Let me know if Margaret or I can be of any further assistance.”

“My friend Daniel would like his own card.”

“All right. Does he reside in Highbridge or in Hothlepoya County?”

“Like me, he’s a Hellbender,” Jumbo said. “His stay here will certainly outlast August,”

“Then he’s not a resident?”

“His mailing address, like mine, is McKissic House on Angus Road. For the next two and half months.”

“Yes, but, it appears that-”

“What length of residency entitles one to a card?” Jumbo’s voice boomed through the building. Folks in the stacks looked over at us. A little boy grabbed his mother’s skirts.

“What we must do is issue a temporary card,” Mrs Hocking said gaily. “If Margaret lists you as one local reference, Mr Clerval, whom may we designate as the other?”

“Mr Jordan McKissic.”

“Certainly. Very good. Here, Margaret. Help this young man fill out the application. Begin with his name and-”

“His name is Daniel Boles,” Jumbo said, already turning toward the nonfiction shelves. “B-O-L-E-S. Complete the form as far as possible without us.”

“Of course. Of course.” Mrs Hocking waved us away. “Browse to your hearts’ content.”

In the philosophy and psychology sections, Jumbo put his hands on my shoulders and tried to whisper:

“Inside, Daniel, Mrs Hocking feels much as her assistant Margaret does-unquiet, frightened. I realize that now. Her overfriendliness shows the truth. She hopes to hide from both me and herself the extent to which I repel her.”

Uh-uh. Jumbo needed to believe Mrs Hocking really did like him for himself.

“I’m correct in this,” he whispered. “From her behavior, I should have deduced her attitude before.” He let go of me to prowl the stacks, mouthing titles and authors’ names, tiptoeing around other patrons like a gigantic reshelver.

With our arms full of books, we returned to the main desk and spilled them out like hodcarriers dumping bricks. Mrs Hocking added Jumbo’s reserve book to the pile, and I completed the card application her assistant had started.

“Isn’t that more than ten?” Mrs Hocking stamped away.

“Eleven, with the reserve book,” Jumbo said. “But you may put that one on Daniel’s card.”

“I’m afraid we-” Mrs Hocking began to say. “Very good,” she said instead. “He may even benefit from reading it, should you finish it quickly enough to pass it on, Mr Clerval.” She bustled and stamped. “Good day, gentlemen. Give our rivals in your baseball matches glorious what-for.”

“Thanks,” Jumbo said. “You’re more than kind.” He shoved our loot into his satchel and led me out the door.

Outside, I looked at him with real disappointment. He’d just called Mrs Hocking “more than kind.” But if he’d sized her up correctly in the stacks, that was a lie.

“She desires to be a friend,” Jumbo replied to my look, “even if the natural impulse to that state eludes her. I spoke to her desire, not to the canker of her predisposition.”

That had a highfalutin ring to it, but it nailed me anyway. If Jumbo wanted to fledge Mrs Hocking’s better angel, he had to have leave to appeal to it.

At the farmer’s market, we bought pears from a pavilion vendor and sat on the concrete platform to eat them. Stacks of produce-turnip greens, unshucked early corn, plump tomatoes in bushel baskets-more or less hid us from autograph seekers. I ate my pear first, then took my notebook from my shirt pocket and wrote out a question:

What book did you reserve?

Jumbo dug through his bag and found it. He dropped it into my lap. I wiped my sticky hands on my pants so I could handle the volume: On Being a Real Person by Harry Emerson Fosdick, a self-help thing by this famous New York clergyman.

“ ‘The central business of every human being is to be a real person,’ ” Jumbo said. “Mr Fosdick’s opening sentence.”

Back then, Fosdick’s line didn’t impress me at all. All I could think of was Fearless Fosdick, the cartoon defective Al Capp had created in Li’l Abner to send up Dick Tracy. Fearless Fosdick strolled around with bullet-hole windows in him-they never seemed to bother him much. Anyway, I imagined this Harry Emerson Fosdick guy sitting at his typewriter with bullet holes in him, banging out On Being a Real Person despite looking like a wounded cartoon character himself.

I wrote Fearless Fosdick? on a notebook page and handed it to Jumbo, whose expression reminded me of the look you see on a baby’s face when it’s trying to load up a diaper.

“I believe this Mr Fosdick”-he tapped the book-“is more fearless than most acknowledge. It takes… balls to write a treatise on achieving authentic identity.”

We set out again for McKissic House. I carried the book bag, and Jumbo walked along reading Fosdick’s best-seller. In his hands, it looked no bigger than a match book.