Highpockets (10 page)

“Ya will! Ya will!” His face lit up, his expression changed, he was a different person. “Ya will? Promise?”

“Oh, no. I don’t promise a thing. This is strictly up to you. You be a good boy and do as yer told, and you’ll get it. Depends entirely on you, and what Miss Simpson reports to me tomorrow morning over the phone. Now then, I’ll see you in the afternoon. G’d night now.”

He left the hot room, followed closely by the nurse, the empty glass in one hand. “Mr, McDade, the doctor wants to speak to you a moment. He’s in the staff office on the second floor. He asked me to have you stop past on your way out.”

Highpockets went down in the elevator, got off at the second floor, and knocked on the doctor’s door.

“Yes, come in, come in. Glad to see you, Mr. McDade. I had to look in and check on our patient this evening, and I thought perhaps you’d like to know how things were going. Sit down, please.”

He fumbled nervously with some papers on his desk, lit a cigarette, fumbled and shuffled the papers some more. Then he swung round in his chair and faced Highpockets.

“Mr. McDade, the boy isn’t coming along as fast as we’d hoped. Naturally, it’s not possible to tell definitely, but probably the crisis in his case will come some time tomorrow or the next day. If the condition doesn’t improve, then ...”

“You mean ... otherwise you’ll have to amputate his leg?”

The electric fan on the bookcase buzzed and whirred. “It’s something to be considered,” said the doctor gravely.

Holy mackerel! If only I’d nabbed that fly ball; if only I’d kept my temper with that truck driver! If only ... if only ... if only ...

“Mind you, I don’t say it will be necessary. I merely suggest it as a possibility. Much depends on these next couple of days, which is why I wanted to talk to you. If we can keep his spirits up when the crisis sets in, that will be a big asset. He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Mr. McDade. I dare say you’re one of his heroes.”

“H’m ... well, yessuh ... that is ... not exactly ... yeah.”

The doctor continued. “If only we can keep his spirits up. It’s a sort of team, y’see, you and his family and the nurses and myself, all working together on him. You’re a baseball player; you understand the importance of team play better than anyone. I can see that.”

Yes, and I can see you don’t know the first thing about the setup on this year’s Dodgers, thought Highpockets. Well, anyhow ...

“So if you’ll hold yourself in readiness to drop in as much as possible during the crisis, I’m sure it will help. Mind you, I have every hope. I have hopes because he has such a strong constitution. Of course, in a thing of this sort you never know for sure; complications can set in. But we’ll work together as a team. He’s mighty fond of you because you’re a ballplayer. I guess you’re one of his heroes.”

“Yeah ... shore ’nuff ... I see whatcha mean, Doctor. You can count on me.”

One of his heroes, hey! Well ...

Highpockets went into the steaming August evening in the big city. Hope he knows more about medicine than he does about baseball, that medic, thought the ballplayer. He stood hesitating in his fatigue between the humid subway and an inviting taxi parked at the curb. The driver leaned out to open the door.

“Taxi, sir?”

“Nope, that’ll cost me two-fifty. I could get him that Grenada black surcharge, the half penny purple he wants so bad to complete his set. Only I’m tired, and that smelly subway’s mighty darned hot these nights.

“Taxi, sir, taxi?”

“No, thanks,” said Highpockets. He turned, walked round the corner, and on down to the subway.

Someone had left an evening newspaper in the seat in the empty car as he entered. He picked it up. The sheet was opened at Casey’s column.

The Dodgers in fourth place are still a hustling, battling crew, and they come up to the start of their next to last western trip in a strategic spot to take advantage of any lapses on the part of the league leaders. Considering the injuries they’ve had the past month, with Jocko Klein in and out of the line-up on account of a split thumb, and the disaster to the Kid from Tomkinsville, their star gardener, they’ve done about all anyone could ask.

The worst handicap, besides the failure of some of their older pitchers to come through, has been the collapse of their much publicized rookie, Cecil “Highpockets” McDade, who threatened to tear the league apart with his bat all through last spring. When the Brooks took the blankets off the North Carolina lad at the start of the campaign, it seemed he was a cinch to batter Babe Ruth’s home-run record into oblivion. But the big farm boy still hasn’t learned to hit to the opposite field, and after whacking twenty-seven homers up to the 15th of July, has struck a bad slump. At last the pitchers seem to have found out his weakness. They’ve high-lowed him, pulled the string, fed him sliders and tricky knucklers and just about every freak throw in the book. The way to stop him is with soft stuff. He’s seen so much of it that his timing is off, and he often stands there with his bat on his shoulder, looking like a typical number eight hitter when the ball whistles through the slot.

Yet the Dodgers can’t be counted out of the race, for they’re a dead game ballclub all the way. They still have a chance to cop, especially if they can wallop the Redbirds, who come in for a four-game series at Ebbets Field tomorrow. Given good pitching, they ought to make things interesting for the league leaders, and perhaps start that western trip in a position that makes them dangerous for the clubs above them in the standing. Spike Russell, their courageous pilot, hasn’t given up on his outfit, and Spike has been in some tight spots before and come through. A lot depends on McDade. Should the North Carolina boy start to hit as he did in the early part of the season, the Brooks are a good bet to win. Lately Highpockets has been sulking like a small boy over the defensive shifts thrown against him, yet he’s done nothing to meet them. There’s no secret that the lanky Southerner has never been the most popular man on the club, and the story is that he got into a rhubarb with one of the ace hurlers in the lockers not long ago. If he wants to begin hitting to left and become a team player, he’ll discover a change in his mates’ attitude over-night. This is strictly up to Highpockets.

He tossed the paper to the seat. He was hot all over and not from the heat. He glanced hastily up and down the car. At one end two young men were looking at him curiously, and he knew exactly what they were saying to each other.

“That’s Highpockets McDade ... that bum ... that rockhead!”

W
HENEVER BALLPLAYERS HAVE A
night game ahead, they lie in bed as long as possible, trying to save up energy for the game to come. Rising simply means hours of sitting around hotel lobbies, of lounging in a hot bedroom reading the sports pages or the comics. So the longer they stay in bed, the more time they kill before the moment to leave for the park to dress. That day Manhattan was liquid with humidity. You were damp if you merely leaned over to pick up a newspaper off the floor, or if you sat still and did nothing. That’s the kind of an August day it was.

Highpockets was a farm boy and he never needed an alarm clock to wake him up. No matter how late the game had lasted the previous evening, he invariably woke promptly at five-thirty each morning. By some persistence, he had trained himself to turn over and sleep a couple of hours longer. Not that day. At five-thirty he was wide awake. He lay in the sweltering room, thinking about his rise from the minors through Boise and Fort Worth, his batting slump, and Dean Kennedy and his accident, and stamps—yes, of course, stamps. He thought of all he had learned in the past weeks—cancellations and perforations and surcharges and imprints, Straits Settlements and Hong Kong and Rhodesia and places he never knew existed a month before. In school he had not realized the British had so many colonies. Now it was understandable why Dean got an A in “geogerfy.”

Six, six-thirty, seven, and eight. He lay there wide awake. At last he rose, showered and shaved carefully, and went down to breakfast. He was not hungry. Even in the air-conditioned grill he found difficulty in eating eggs and bacon.

At ten he called the hospital. There was the usual delay in getting the nurse. A strange nurse came to the telephone. The report was indefinite and not good. She simply said that Dean’s temperature was still up and rising, that he had been uncomfortable much of the night.

Uncomfortable! There’s that word again, thought Highpockets.

He got the new red Ford from the garage and drove over to the stamp company, where he spent an hour with a clerk, looking over stamps. By this time he was a knowledgeable purchaser with a fair idea of the value of a stamp and its condition. He bought the four penny puce, watermarked C.A., and also a set of seven Falkland Islands from the one-half penny yellow green to the one shilling bistre brown, all unused and in perfect shape. Because they were a set he got them below catalogue prices, yet at a cost that seemed to him considerable. Once again it was forced upon him that stamp collecting was not an inexpensive hobby.

Miss Simpson’s face was graver when he reached the hospital in the early afternoon. The boy was more hollow-eyed and paler than the previous day. If his appearance had changed, so had that of the room. Now it was a sickroom. Flowers were on the table where once the stamp album held a prominent place. On the little stand beside his bed, a thermometer was stuck in a glass of water. Over everything was the queer, unpleasant smell of infection, a smell that assailed Highpockets the moment he entered. Now the shades were half drawn. This room was different; it was a battlefield like a baseball diamond, and he felt it immediately.

Sick the boy might be, yet not too sick to enjoy his stamps. As he yanked them with trembling fingers from their envelope, his expression grew animated and keen.

“Gee! Gee! Falkland Islands! Gee, thanks. Thanks lots, Mr. McDade; thanks a whole lot. That’s swell of you. And the four penny puce, oh, boy! Mint, too. Gee!”

“Where’s your album, Dean?” He spoke without thinking, carelessly, and the second he spoke he knew he should never have mentioned the album. Glancing up into the eyes of the nurse he received a warning look.

“Aw, gee, my dad took it away from me last night. He’s always taking my stamp album away.” Dean’s head fell back upon the pillow as a spasm of pain went through his leg. “Dad, he took it away. I’m gonna ask Dr. Jansen can I have it later on.” He fingered the stamps, pushing each one up on its hinge, touching each bit of paper gently, excitement in his eyes.

Why, the kid loves stamps. He really loves them like I love pasting the ball over the right field fence, or that wonderful feel of the bat when you’ve caught a fast one on the noggin. He sure loves stamps, this kid, doesn’t he? Maybe I understand why, now.

The boy fingered the stamps a long while. Then his hand, hot and dry, fell on that of the ballplayer by the edge of the bed. “Gee, thanks, Mr. McDade. You’re swell. You like stamps, don’cha?” His head sank back once more on the pillow. His breathing became slower and more difficult. His eyes closed.

“Yeah ... you’re shore welcome, Dean, you shore are. Well, mebbe I’d better be running along now, Nurse.”

The clutch on his hand tightened instantly. The eyes of the boy opened. “Aw, don’t go away; please don’t leave yet. My dad, he took away my album, but he’ll let me have it again. Dr. Jansen will. I’ll ask him will he leave me have it.”

“Yeah, by-and-by he will.” Highpockets laid the small hand on the bed. It slipped from his grasp and dropped inertly to the sheet. “I gotta get me a rubdown and dress before batting practice. Night game this evening. We start batting practice early, y’know.”

“Look! Will ya come back tonight after the game, will ya, please, Mr. McDade? Please. You can help me with my Falkland Islands. I’ll let you stick ’em in.

“Sure, sure, I will if the Doc’ll allow me. Effen he says O.K., I’ll come back, I promise.”

“All right now. You promised. G’d-by. Be sure and come back after the game.”

Highpockets spoke to the nurse about it as he left. She telephoned the doctor at his office, and the doctor replied that perhaps if the boy really wanted Highpockets there, it would help to have him around. He could stay outside, in the corridor, in case the boy asked for him. So he agreed to return after the game.

It was a game he felt would never end, a long, an eternal struggle that lasted far into the hot August night. It was ten-thirty; it was eleven-thirty; it was nearly midnight before Bob Russell singled Highpockets home with the winning run after he had been passed in the last of the thirteenth.

Rushing into the clubhouse, he stepped out of his monkey suit, heavy with dirt and perspiration, and quickly into the showers. He was out and dressed when his teammates had hardly taken off their clothes. They watched as he raced for the door. Same old Highpockets, giving everyone a brush-off, can’t even stop to say good night. What a guy!

Without pausing for a meal, he bought a hot dog and jumped into his car in the parking lot across the street. He drove quickly to the hospital, which he reached just before one o’clock. He had been awake since five-thirty; he was tired, beaten, drained, and empty when he got to the sixth floor, dark save for a night lamp on the desk of the nurse on duty. Up and down the corridor other nurses crept silently from various doors. He sat waiting for the lad’s own nurse to come out. Finally she left the room and noticed him sitting beside the desk, waiting. “Been here long?” she asked. The doctors were having a consultation inside. He sat wiping his forehead, wondering whether he had time for a bite to eat, yet not daring to leave in case the boy should call for him. At last the two medicos emerged. Their faces were grave and drawn. Dr. Jansen came across to the desk.

“He’s been asking for you all evening, so we’re going to let you go in and sit there. Try to keep him from talking if you can.”

From the grim attitude of the doctor Highpockets understood how serious it was, guessed that it was worse even than the loss of a leg. He was bewildered by the whole thing. The boy had been so healthy, so ... so ... all right the previous week.