Brittle Innings

55

On Sunday afternoon, the Gendarmes played us tough again. Their ace, Sundog Billy Wallace, dueled our rookie star, Fadeaway Ankers. Neither had his best stuff, but Wallace was always a scrapper and Fadeaway’d learned from Dunnagin how to pitch when his speedball had taken a holiday. By the middle of the fourth, the scoreboard read three to three.

Buck Hoey’d picked up right where he’d finished yesterday’s game. Nothing existed for him but himself, the ball, the bases, and the base paths. He didn’t bullyrag or chatter, he just centered himself and played.

In the top of the fifth, at first again on his third single of the day, Hoey took a crouching lead, broke on Fadeaway’s move to the plate, and geysered up out of his slide, after hooking around my tag, in a swirl of red dust. He called time to brush himself off, and when he did, I touched him on the hip with the web of my glove, a half-hearted effort to get the base ump to throw a thumb at him. No go. Because of the timeout, the fact Hoey stood off the bag slapping red-orange dust from his pants didn’t mean cracklin bread.

My meaningless tag got Hoey’s attention, though. He cocked awake and jabbed me in the gut with his finger.

“Uh-uh-uh,” said the base ump, Little Cuke Gordon. “Hands to yoresef, Hoey.”

“S just a love poke. Only one Dumbo’s gotten all season. Less, of course, Jumbo’s buggering him.”

“Put a lid on it, Hoey, or clean it up.”

“Christ, Gordon, you sound like a bluenose.” Hoey returned to second. “And, Dumbo, you poor gazoonie,” he said, kicking some dirt at me with the side of his shoe, “tell Mister JayMac he lost Highbridge a pennant the day he dealt me. Tell him it was a damned stupid thing to do.”

I flipped the ball back to Fadeaway and returned to my spot at short. The only way to deal with an asshole, I thought, was to wipe it-which us Hellbenders intended to do on the field. Hoey, meanwhile, tunneled into himself again, taking his lead, daring Fadeaway to pick him off. No need. The next hitter up fouled out to Curriden, ending the inning.

Later, during the seventh-inning stretch, with our organist playing a medley of show tunes and Cokesbury hymns, Milt Frye spoke out over the PA system: “S a great time to visit our concession stands. Slaw dogs, nickel Co-Cola, boiled peanuts, and, one of yall’s favorites, Cracker Jacks. Patriotic Cracker Jacks-a prize in ever box, not a one made in Japan…

“I’ve jes got some big news for immediate release. Namely, two of our worthiest ’Benders-though I don’t mean Mr Bebout-have earned train tickets to Canaan. Yessir. Come Tuesday, Jumbo Hank Clerval and Battlin Danny Boles will be bona fide big leaguers. The Phils need help, and these fellas’re gonna go up to provide it. We know what they can do. Now them pitiful long-sufferers in the City of Brotherly Love’re gonna find out too.

“Whadda. Yall. Think. Bout. That?”

Nearly everybody on hand went loopy. Cow bells. Hooting. Clapping. Ooga horns. You’d’ve thought FDR’d just announced the unconditional surrender of Hitler and Tojo.

In our dugout, Henry peered gloomily down the bench at Mister JayMac. “Who chose this ill-timed moment to divulge our good fortune?”

“It wasn’t I,” Mister JayMac said.

“Atta way a go!” Lamar Knowles told Henry and me. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Danny? Didn’t I?”

Several other guys, including even Sosebee and Evans, came over to congratulate us.

The crowd rioted in place. Pretty soon we could hear it chanting, “Jumbo and Dumbo! Send em out PRONTO!”

Henry waved his arm in disgust. The crowd’d seemed to’ve forgotten the game in the hullabaloo of Frye’s announcement, and the Gendarmes had another reason, like they needed it, to come after us like rabid badgers.

“Hush em up!” Mister JayMac shouted down the bench at Henry and me. “Get out there and tip your caps!”

Henry and I, the Mutt and Jeff of the CVL, clambered onto the field to greet the misplaced huzzas of our fans. We tipped our caps. The fans stamped their feet, whistled, or stood to cheer. From their own dugout or their places on the field, the Gendarmes squinted and frowned.

Henry raised his arms. “ENOUGH!” His bellow silenced the crowd. “We have work yet to do! This display bids fair to undo our enterprise!” He put his cap back on and galumphed grimly back to our dugout, with me more or less in tow and the crowd stunned into mass catatonia.

“Great,” Mister JayMac said, scowling. “Jes great.”

“Loose lips sink ships,” Henry said. “But no one in this organization could see that prophylactic slogan’s application to the situation here.”

“I didn’t authorize the announcement,” Mister JayMac said. He called Euclid over. “Go up there and ask Mr Frye who told him about the call-up. You got me?”

“Yessuh.” Euclid shot out of the dugout and hustled up the steps to the press box.

“Cmon!” Mister JayMac yelled. “Draw a line under what Milt Frye jes blabbed to the world! Grab the flag!”

So happened, Henry had the lead-off spot against Sundog Billy in the bottom of the seventh. First pitch, he smacked it like a Bobby Jones tee shot. The snap of his bat was like a molar cracking on a jawbreaker. Everybody rose, even us guys in the dugout. If this was a balata ball, a big league cull, Henry’d just launched it into low earth orbit, a pre-Sputnik Sputnik.

The score stood four to three, Hellbenders.

Curriden fanned, as Wallace bore down. Heggie one-hopped a nubber to the second baseman for our second out. Euclid came back into the dugout. Henry buttonholed him even before Mister JayMac could get over to him.

“And what did you discover?”

“What did Mr Frye say?” Mister JayMac chimed in.

Euclid stood dwarfed by the two men. He kept his eyes on the tobacco-stained concrete floor.

“Speak up, Euclid!” Mister JayMac said.

“Say Miz Giselle tol him,” Euclid whispered.

“Holy fire! How’d she even know?”

“She overheard,” Henry said. “And this is my recompense.”

“Your what?”

Henry waved off the question and sat back down next to me as Euclid slunk back to his own roost next to Bebout. Dunnagin ended the inning by skying a hard-hit but shallow fly to Nugent in center. We had a one-run lead and two more Gendarme at bats to survive. We survived the first un, but couldn’t up our lead in our own trip to town.

In the top of the ninth, Fadeaway suckered Jim Keating, a pinch hitter for Wallace, on a third-strike sinker into the dirt. Dunnagin trapped it with his mitt and swiped it across Keating’s backside for a quick-thinking assist on the putout. One down. Two outs to the CVL championship. The crowd sounded like the ocean in a hurricane swell.

Buck Hoey came to the plate. Bingo! A blue darter into left center, right over my head. Hoey rounded first like he had it in mind to keep on coming. Musselwhite rifled the ball in to me, though, and Hoey retreated to first, mumbling something that got a weird grin from Henry, a half-innocent, half-psycho grin.

Nugent came up. He hadn’t had a good night, but he led Strock’s boys in hitting, with an average approaching.330. I expected Mister JayMac to signal Fadeaway to walk him, to get to the slumping Jed Balmore, LaGrange’s second baseman, but Mister JayMac refused to put the go-ahead run on base this late in the game. He wristed a paint-brushing gesture at Fadeaway, a sign to paint the plate’s corners-to give Nugent nothing in the fat of the strike zone.

Craftily, Nugent worked the count to three and two. He fouled off four pitches that plate umpire Grayson Dover-Mister JayMac’d pulled strings to keep Polidori out of this series-might’ve retired Nugent on, otherwise. Then, Fadeaway’s tenth pitch, Nugent hit a low, twisting shot at Junior between first and second, almost on the outfield grass.

On the pitch, Hoey’d broken for second. He had to leap Nugent’s ground-hugger to avoid putting himself out, but his skip step didn’t slow him. As I ran to cover second, Junior bobbled the roller, got his grip again, and whipped a sidearm throw towards second in the hope, the near certainty, I’d get there in time to catch it, toe-kick the bag, and fire to Henry for a game-ending double-play.

Junior-to-Dumbo-to-Jumbo. A riff on the famous Dumbo-to-Junior-to-Jumbo combo.

Hoey was barreling. I picked off Junior’s stinger at belt height. Hoey slammed the dirt and slid towards me feet first, cleats high. His spikes looked big, a grizzy’s fangs ready to tear. When I kicked second, one of Hoey’s shoes bit me in the groin and ripped into my left inner thigh. I began to fall. Little Cuke Gordon’d planted himself to see the force, and he twisted his face as he thumbed Hoey out. Falling, I sidearmed the ball to Henry as hard as I could and watched in agony as his glove hand reached damn-near halfway down the base path to meet it. His right leg strained back towards first to close the double-play circuit.

An instant before Nugent’s foot hit the bag, the ball went thwack! in Henry’s mitt, and Little Cuke threw his arm up in another show-boaty gotcha! Even face-down in the clay, I had to admire the guy’s dramatic flair.

The game was over. The Hellbenders-my Hellbenders-had won. Our fans bounced up and down, do-si-do’d in the aisles, yodeled rebel yells, howled like wolves.

Then I stopped noticing because every part of me below my waist on my left leg seemed to’ve caught fire. I rolled to my back. It wasn’t quite five in the afternoon, but the sky looked black and I saw stadium’s lights blazing against that blackness, two dozen or so tall fuzzy haloes, shrinking and bloating. Stars swam into the blackness between the haloes, and my head bloated along with them, like someone’d jammed a hissing air hose into my ear. The fire in my leg got hotter, my skin crisped like a burning paper sack, a mayhem of fluids seeped into the clay.

Buck Hoey’s face blocked the haloes and the stars. “Nice play, Dumbo.” A pair of baseball shoes fell out of the sky and bounced on my stomach. “Wear these in the bigs, kid. If you ever really get there.”

Hoey vanished.

Where Hoey’d stood, the sky ran afternoon blue again. I pushed the shoes off my belly and doubled over, clutching my leg and making a noise that opened into a scream. Or maybe I didn’t scream, for some of our fans-GIs, teenagers, feisty little boys-had scrambled onto the field to run about waving caps and souvenir pennants. They swung one another around like square dancers. None of them seemed to hear me. The National Anthem played scratchily, blaring through the PA system, but I guess nobody could hear it either. Junior Heggie knelt beside me, with Henry right behind him, and then, better late than never, Mister JayMac showed-dogged, I imagine, by memories of Charlie Snow’s last day.

“Daniel!” Mister JayMac cried. “Daniel, can you stand?”

Uh-uh. I thought maybe I was screaming again-a scream ricocheted between my ears-but Henry waved his arm at somebody near the clubhouse.

“A canvas litter for Daniel!” he shouted. “Immediately!”

I passed out-into dry-ice fog and a field of parka-clad ballplayers frozen against the brittle light pulsing without letup through the grayness.