Highpockets (11 page)

He opened the door and entered. The kid’s face, flushed and feverish, was on one side of the pillow. In his hand he clutched the stamps from the Falkland Islands. His breathing was rapid, abnormal. The nurse turned to Highpockets as he sat down. It was a new night nurse; she understood, she smiled faintly. He took his place in the stiff chair beside the bed. Dean opened his eyes.

“ ’Lo,” he said faintly. One hand stretched out, or rather waved feebly in the air. Highpockets reached across and took it, a small hand, white against his own big brown paw.

A luminous clock ticked away on the night table. Highpockets forgot his fatigue, forgot his hunger, forgot everything save the struggle of the boy in the bed. Then, in the armchair behind, he noticed the kid’s father, dozing. Still the boy held on to the hand of the Dodger’s right fielder with his hot grip. It was two o’clock, it was two-thirty, it was three. The man’s arm ached, his fingers were wet and tired; he clung to that hot hand still.

Finally the nurse rose, felt of his pillow, went out for a fresh, dry one and returned. Highpockets dropped the hand. The boy stirred.

“Mr. McDade.” The voice was cracked and hoarse. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

“Why, no, Dean, I’m not leaving. I’m still here, see. I came back right after the game and I’m gonna stay.”

“Take my Falkland Islands; you keep ’em for me, will ya, Mr. McDade?”

From under the bedclothes came his other hand clutching still the crumpled envelope with the stamps in it. “Sure, I’ll take ’em; I’ll take care of ’em for you, Dean. Don’t you worry, I’ll take good care of ’em.”

The boy sank back exhausted onto the fresh pillow which the nurse shoved under him. The father stepped into the corridor for a cigarette, and Highpockets followed to inquire about the boy’s condition. To his surprise, the worried man seized him by the arm.

“How d’ya do it? How d’ya do it, huh?”

Highpockets was puzzled. Do what?

“How d’ya do it? Sometimes I can’t cope with that-there kid. Seems like he gets away from me, somehow. I aim to be a good father and all that, yet one way or another, I don’t understand, he wants you here tonight. How d’ya do it?”

Highpockets was puzzled still. It was the anxious look of the father who suddenly sees he hasn’t been a success with his boy. Yet how
did
he do it? Why did the youngster want him there that evening? Highpockets couldn’t exactly explain. He only knew one thing; it sure wasn’t sport they had in common, the two of them.

The nurse passed them in the hall. Highpockets tiptoed back to his chair in the room. He took the feverish hand of the boy. Now he was all alone with the restless figure in the bed. He realized now that he, too, was exhausted, weak and weary so he could hardly sit up straight. Yet nothing counted, nothing was real save the boy, prisoner of his illness there in the dim room. No, nothing, not the Babe’s home-run record, waiting to be broken, not even the farm at home, and the education of his brothers and sisters. He glanced anxiously at the swollen face on the pillow.

Then the queer breathing set in once more, a sort of change of breathing during which Dean’s hand tightened in agony over the fingers of the ballplayer. The spasm grew worse, subsided slowly after a while, then died away. The nurse leaned down and wiped the boy’s cheeks and forehead with a damp towel. He seemed almost gone; he was a gaunt shadow on the white pillow, a skeleton. Yet his grip was as fierce as ever on the ballplayer’s hand. Now Highpockets knew what it was—the will to live. This was it.

The clock showed four-fifteen. Four-twenty. Four-thirty. Already, through the edges of the curtains, a faint, dim grayness, delicate, imperceptible, was nevertheless there in the sky. The boy stirred, opened his eyes.

“Don’t go away. Don’t go away ...”

“No, Dean, I’m here. I shan’t leave. Don’t you worry, I won’t go away.”

“Mr. McDade.” He whispered again. “Mr. McDade.”

The fingers tightened around the ballplayer’s hand. “Hit’s O.K., big boy. Hit’s O.K. I’m still here.”

O
F ALL THAT LONG
afternoon with its scorching heat and its fierce struggle between two good ballclubs, each of whom refused to admit the other was good, he remembered little. Sitting later that evening in the hot room, listening once more to the strained breathing of the boy and watching his fight for life, even those two important games, even his own place in the thing called baseball, seemed not very vital. Because the kid on the bed might be Henry Lee; that’s the way Henry Lee would look if his hair was cut and he was sick and weak and ill.

What he recalled of that double-header afterward was the exhausted feeling he had as he drew on the trousers of his monkey suit before the first game, and then the dragged-outness in his bones as he shagged the long flies at practice. And later on, in the game, when one can forget one’s troubles in the team sorrows, came the procession of Dodger pitchers taking an early walk—Razzle and Homer Slawson and Jerry Fielding and the new youngster, Chris Terry, one after the other, stepping confidently to the mound, and then off again. He remembered also the long-ball hitter of the Cards, and how he looked at the plate in that awkward batting stance, and the way the ball went sailing over his head into Bedford Avenue, and the yells and jeers of the mob. And the next batter. And the next. And the next.

You know how it is with hitters; one man does it, and the next man catches the fever and steps in and clouts one, and so on and so on all down the line. Even the bottom of the batting order. Everyone smashing them into the slot; a run, another run, another and another. Dismay! Disaster! The dissolution of a team.

Highpockets stood there motionless and helpless in the burning sunshine, watching the pitchers shuffle out of the bullpen, and the strange, hurt way the previous man stumbled off the mound, touching the peak of his cap, slapping his glove nervously against his thigh, wiping his hand across his shirt front. Then the desultory handclaps as he came toward the dugout and vanished underneath the passageway to the clubhouse. Spike stood out there beside the rubber, hands on hips, waiting for each hurler to amble in from deep right field. Jocko, his mask on, scuffed up the dirt with his spikes, while the crowd roared from above and around them as the runs mounted on the scoreboard.

103 042 61

000 000 00

All the while Highpockets stood there helpless in the burning sun, watching the crumbling of a team.

He recalled later that in the clubhouse, while the team ripped off their soaking wet clothes and changed into fresh uniforms between games, the reporters pestered him with the usual questions.

“Nope, guess not. I looked at a lot of good pitches, that’s all. I say I looked at them and just didn’t hit. Shucks, he made me hit
his
pitch, not mine. His delivery is shore rough; he’s a wheel man, has the ball way back here. Not one of his balls is fat. Well, that’s how it is. S’cuse me, will ya, please, fellas? I gotta make an important phone call.”

He walked away, as the sportswriters looked at each other. Even the players glanced over curiously. “So that’s it, that’s what’s biting him,” said one of them. “Must be a girl has Highpockets down, him going six for nothing this way. Must be his girl has chucked him over.”

The lines to the hospital were all busy. He was afraid he would never get the connection in time. One by one, in twos and threes, he saw the team leave, heard them tramp out and the click-click, click-click of their spikes and the door slamming. A warning that game time was fast approaching. Now hardly anyone was left in the big room. Just Chiselbeak picking up their wet clothes, and the Doc in the corner working over one of the pitchers on the rubbing table. Then the door banged again, and someone returned for his glove or a pet bat or a new pair of sun glasses. Still the hospital number was busy; it took forever to reach, and when he finally did get it, the time seemed endless before he could get the sixth floor and Miss Simpson.

At last her voice came. It was—for her—excited. The boy’s temperature was going down at last.

“He’s better this afternoon,” she said. “He’s really better for the first time in a fortnight. The doctors are pleased.”

He’s better at last. He’s better, thought Highpockets, as he went through the runway to the field where the game was about to begin, the two managers strolling up to the umpires with the line-ups in their hands. The two pitchers were tossing in their last warm-ups. Spike Russell came along the bench, an anxious look on his face.

“Take it easy, take it easy this time, big boy; you just take it easy a while. Alan’s going in at right.”

Highpockets stood motionless. Alan Whitehouse in my spot! Why, that’s the first game I haven’t started since April sixteenth, the very first one!

His face flushed. So I’m benched, he thought. Rage and humiliation filled him, for he was a ballplayer first of all, and real ballplayers want to play ball. Then slowly the remembrance of the telephone call came over him; he sank back and slumped to the bench. Aw, what’s the difference? The kid’s better, the kid’ll pull through now. That’s what really counts.

The public address system was sounding off with the line-ups, as the Dodgers trotted out on the diamond.

“Whitehouse, number six, right ...”

Hey, Whitehouse in right field! Not that mug who doesn’t like Brooklyn; Highpockets is out. A great hoot filled the ballpark, grew louder still and louder, bounced back against the stands in left center and echoed from behind the plate. Highpockets sat slumped on the bench with old Fat Stuff and the substitutes and one or two pitchers who were not on bullpen duty, listening as the roar from the mob increased in volume, until the whole packed throng was giving him the grand razoo. He sat there, and for once it didn’t really matter; it didn’t annoy him; he just didn’t care. After all, the kid’s better, isn’t he?

O
NCE FAT STUFF
was young, a star and a starting pitcher for the Dodgers. Years went past and at last the managers had to use him more sparingly. Spike Russell still got plenty of work from him as a relief hurler, and the boys always said Fat Stuff spent so much time in the bullpen he got his mail there. An ancient gag, yet one sure to trace a smile on the pitcher’s lined face. Finally the moment arrived when there were little bulges of flesh over his hips, and a fold of fat beneath his chin. Fat Stuff then became most useful as a coach, helping the new men on the pitching staff and passing along his vast knowledge of players and the game to the youngsters on the Brooklyn squad. For he had as shrewd a judgment of baseball as anyone on the club, yes, even including Charlie Draper, the third-base coach who had been around the league for twenty-five years.

The Dodgers were on the road and were playing Chicago that afternoon. Highpockets, still benched, sat in the dugout beside Fat Stuff. The oldster squinted through the glare at the Cub hurler astride the rubber. “Don’t for the life of me understand why you fellas can’t hit him. He’s not fast enough to get by without a curve ball and, doggone, he hasn’t got a curve.”

“No curve, hey? His breaking stuff ain’t so bad, Fat Stuff. Seems plenty like a curve when you’re in there facing it. Why, he’s won a lot of games for hisself this summer.”

“Yeah, he has at that. Only I swear he hasn’t got no curve. Maybe he jinxed you guys. Hullo, there’s another pass.”

With two out, the pitcher slowed to a walk, to a couple of walks that placed Brooklyn runners on first and second. Alan Whitehouse stepped in. Some perfunctory applause from the stands; no hooting, no jeering.

Alan struck the first pitch, topping a bounding roller just to the left of first. The first baseman tore in as the pitcher ran over to cover the bag, turned, and then threw to the base. It was a close race. Alan made a desperate slide as he neared the bag, and from the dugout seemed clearly to have the pitcher beaten.

But the umpire waved him out.

Instantly the whole Brooklyn bench was on its feet, yowling. Alan picked himself from the dust and charged toward old Stubblebeard, the umpire, tense with emotion. Red Cassidy, the first-base coach, was at his elbow. Spike Russell also raced from the dugout to protest the decision, while the stands yelled and the Brooklyn baserunners who had advanced on the play stood panting over second and third.

The three Brooklyn players surrounded the oldster in blue, angrily jawing. He folded his arms, set his chin and, turning, walked away with dignity in his steps. They followed with less dignity in theirs, still yapping like dogs for their dinner.

At last the old man turned. “Go back to the dugout, you fellas. Go back to that bench and button yer lip.”

However, they stood there, hovering around him, still growling and arguing. At last the crowd got unruly and began to shout for the game to proceed. Finally the umpire signaled impatiently to resume play; Spike moved slowly back toward the bench, while Red Cassidy, shaking his head, returned to the coaching box back of first. Only Alan stayed on the diamond, chin to chin with the umpire. At last, smacking the dirt from his pants, he moved away with a parting thrust.

“Hey, there, fellas, what say we all chip in and buy the old geezer a Seeing Eye Dog?”

It was the “old” that did it. Stubblebeard had been around a long while and been called names plenty of times; but the insinuation that he was past his prime hurt. He took one step forward. His right arm went up. His index finger pointed remorselessly toward the dugout.

“You there, number six, go take a shower fer yerself and be quick about it.”

The crowd howled as Alan, still tossing remarks over one shoulder, sauntered deliberately into the dugout and disappeared from view. So, as they took the field again, the Dodgers were short a right fielder, and Highpockets at a sign from Spike picked up his glove, stepped from the bench, and loped into right field, adjusting his sun glasses around the back of his cap. The fans in the bleachers in right center rose as he approached. Then the gang in the right field stands took up the cry, louder and louder; groans and jeers sounded as he turned to face the plate, thumping his glove.