Highpockets (9 page)

He unfastened the stamp and held it up to the light. All this meant nothing to Highpockets, who was mystified by the jargon. Then the boy licked the gummed sticker and pasted it back into the album with quick, expert movements.

“Dean, Dean! Please, Dean, don’t bother Mr. McDade. He isn’t interested in stamps.”

This was untrue. Highpockets was slightly dizzy from glancing much too quickly at pages flipped past his gaze, at rows and rows of colored stamps ranged in orderly lines in the album, bewildered by the flood of words, most of which meant nothing whatever to him. It was a language he couldn’t speak. He was confused and also astonished at the change in the youngster. Certainly, he was interested.

Isn’t this something! Here’s a bigger nut than a baseball fan! All over stamps, too, imagine that! And next Tuesday, the twenty-second, is his birthday. Say, I must dig up some stamps for the kid. Wonder where you buy stamps, anyhow? If he wants stamps and likes stamps, I’ll sure get him stamps. I sure will. Maybe some of these magazines will tell where to buy them.

He reached out and thumbed over the pile of magazines lying on the table.
Stamps. McKeel’s Weekly. Scott’s Monthly Journal. Harmer’s Stamp Hints.

“You take a lotta stamp magazines, don’t you, Dean?”

“Yeah. Look! Looka here, Mr. McDade.”

The ballplayer and the boy bent over the stamp album together, forgetting for just a few minutes that with an operation one never knows.

T
OO EARLY TO TELL,
said Dr. Jansen over the telephone. Too early to tell, said his young assistant surgeon when Highpockets met him in the corridor of the hospital. Too early yet to tell much, said the nurses outside the door of the boy’s room. That was the moment he realized the truth of the doctor’s remark, that with an operation one never knew.

He’s a strong kid, Highpockets kept saying to himself over and over. He’s young, he’s healthy, he has a circulation like the
New York Daily News.
But suppose things took a turn for the worse; suppose the boy actually had to lose a leg, so he could never run or play games again! All on account of a muffed fly ball and a dispute with a truck driver on a hot street in Brooklyn. If only I hadn’t got mad and started off so fast that evening, he thought. Nope. I shouldn’t feel that way about the accident. The whole thing just happened; it really wasn’t my fault at all. The kid ran out and crashed into my car, and bang! I couldn’t have helped what took place. Besides, I’m paying for the whole operation.

Only suppose it turns out badly! Suppose the kid has to lose a leg. Suppose the infection gets worse ...

These were the thoughts he juggled in his brain as he lay awake night after night in the hot hotel room during the steaming weather at the end of July. He could visit the boy for only a few minutes at a time, but did not forget the stamps for his birthday. In spite of the pain in his leg—the doctors called it discomfort—the boy’s face lit up when he saw the present, and grabbing at the package he pulled the stamps from the envelope.

Knowing nothing whatever about stamps or stamp collecting, Highpockets had bought the lot from a friendly clerk at Gimbel’s, slightly astonished to discover that this was an expensive hobby. There they were, spread out on the bedsheet, sets of new, unused stamps with the numbers on, a fact which the clerk had explained made them more valuable. After one look, however, the face of the boy again dissolved into pain. The stamps in his hand dropped to the bed.

“Yeah, thanks lots. Thanks, Mr. McDade. Only now, see, I don’t c’llect these. I don’t c’llect this kind. I only c’llect up to 1900. I don’t c’llect anything after 1900.”

Highpockets wasn’t sure what he meant by this, yet he understood that the stamps somehow didn’t fit into the boy’s collection and were not what he wanted. Carefully placing them back in their envelope, the ballplayer slipped them into his pocket. Out in the corridor he wrote down what the youngster had said. “Don’t collect after 1900.”

Perhaps it was the strain of the pennant race, perhaps he was baseball-weary after the struggle of the spring and early summer. Perhaps it was worry over the boy’s operation or just an inevitable mid-season slump. At any rate, something seemed to affect Highpockets’ batting. There were days when it was impossible to get the ball away from the packed defense on the right side, when he couldn’t get a shot to the outfield. Every night he went to bed saying to himself, Tomorrow I’ll rip one. The next day his savage drives would go straight at the second baseman stationed in the hole where, with a normal setup, the hit would have meant a free passage into right field. He began to take third strikes with his bat on his shoulder, something he had never done in his whole baseball career. From .305 his batting average tumbled slowly to .300 and then nearer .290. Those homerun clouts were less frequent, he was breaking up fewer games with his grand slams. He fell into his slump, curiously enough, just when the rest of the club began to hit more powerfully.

The slump delighted the fans. As his hitting went off, they came out in greater numbers than ever to watch him stumble and give him a lusty razoo. “Let’s get Highpockets’ goat,” they said, swarming into the stands with horns, cowbells, whistles, and powerful throats and lungs. To be sure, he was still drawing quite a few bases on balls. But, as Spike remarked to Jack MacManus, the club president, one morning when they were discussing the team’s problem child, “You don’t hit in runs with bases on balls.”

MacManus observed the rookie’s slump with concern, for the return of Roy Tucker from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore was still problematical. On weekdays when the crowd was not too large, the club president even tried to rope off several sections in deep right nearest Highpockets’ position in the field. The fans caught on to this maneuver and increased their noisy heckling from a distance. They went after him all the harder, until he really had the miseries.

One afternoon in a tight game against the Cubs, he charged up to the edge of the boxes for a foul fly, the crowd roaring. The ball drifted gently with the wind into the first tier of boxes, just out of reach of the playing field. Highpockets came up to the box, reached over, got his glove on the ball, and then, stumbling among the scattering occupants in the seats, dropped it as he tumbled to the floor in a clatter of falling chairs.

He picked himself from the mess, the crowd yelling with delight from above.

“Highpockets, you’re a bum in spades.”

“Hey, McDade, you rockhead; you rockhead, McDade!”

“You louse you, Highpockets.”

He was completely disgusted with himself for losing the ball and missing that important out which he felt ordinarily he would have made. On the mound Bones Hathaway stood watching, hands on his hips, yanking savagely at his cap as he turned to take a new ball from Jocko. Highpockets noticed this and was furious, annoyed with Bonesey, with himself, most of all with the howling mob of wolves in the stands. Over one shoulder he yelled at them as he walked back to his place in deep right.

“Aw, nuts to you guys, all of you!”

It was all the mob needed, those who heard him and those who did not. The entire right field stands rose, delighted to be able to needle him, their croakings and honkings resounding across the diamond. There were now runners on second and third, two down, and the Cub slugger at the plate. As usual, given another life, he slashed the next pitch, banging a line drive off the concrete in left field.

So instead of getting out of the traffic jam, Bonesey had a two-run deficit to face and a batter perched on second base.

He can’t take it, said the fans, as his average continued to drop. He can’t take it. Remember how everyone laughed when the Reds tried that swing-shift. Well, it’s sure paid off. Lots of old-timers said the shift was silly, that it would never work against him as it had failed lots of times against other batters in the past; that he would soon learn to hit to the opposite field; that you can’t get away with that sort of thing in the majors; that he was too smart a batter to be fooled by a packed defense.

It had worked far better than anyone could have imagined. Highpockets’ batting miseries grew worse. Possibly he didn’t have his entire mind on baseball. For after every contest he would race in to the clubhouse in his soaking clothes and rush to the telephone.

One afternoon that week it took longer than usual to get the number. The line was busy and Highpockets grew feverish with impatience. At last the connection was made. “Foxcroft nine, seven two hundred? Bushwick? Lemme have Miss Simpson, the head nurse on the sixth floor, please. Miss Simpson? Hit’s Cecil McDade. How’s the boy today? No change? Too early yet? I see; I understand, I getcha. How’s his temperature? It is? That ain’t so good, is it? I see. O.K. Tell him mebbe I’ll drop in for a few minutes tonight. And look, tell him I’ll bring some stamps, some new stamps along with me.”

Then Highpockets slipped off his clothes and into the showers and so into his street clothes and out to grab a taxi, brushing away half a dozen kids who were pleading for his autograph. All the while thinking, Gee, he’s just Henry Lee’s age; same age, same grade in school. Imagine if Henry Lee lost his leg and couldn’t drive the tractor or play ball or do anything round the place! Imagine that!

“Where ya wanna go, mister?” The taxi driver had one hand on the clock.

“New York. Scott Stamp and Coin Company. That’s Fifth offa Forty-seventh.”

Highpockets reached the place and went directly up to the clerk behind the counter.

“Could I see the manager, please?”

The clerk looked at him and was dubious. What did he want to sell?

“I ain’t sellin’ nothin’. I’d just like to learn something about stamps, that’s all. See now, I just don’t know a thing about stamps, and I’d like for to have the best expert in the place explain things to me, tutor me, kind of, say for a week, so I’d understand what this stamp collecting is all about.”

The clerk’s mouth opened. He’d never heard such an unusual request before. Highpockets continued: “Oh, I’d pay right good for the information. But I’d like to know all about stamps. For instance now, what’s it mean when a feller doesn’t collect after 1900?”

Highpockets had learned something. There’s no easy way to a boy’s heart. Like everything else, you have to work for it.

I
T WAS HARDLY
what one would call a well-ordered hospital room, but then the boy had a wise and understanding nurse. In a basin of water on the table were floating bits of colored paper; other bits curled up on a huge piece of blotting paper. Beside him on the bed were the album, two catalogues, a watermark detector, a magnifying glass, a pair of tweezers, and a generous packet of stamp hinges.

The ballplayer and the boy bent over the stamp together. Then the youngster reached out, took a bottle off the little table beside the bed, let several drops of benzine fall onto the stamp which he held in his hand with the tweezers. Then he replaced the stopper in the bottle.

His hands trembled slightly as he did so.

“You cold?”

“Naw. I’m hot.” He peered through the magnifying glass in Highpockets’ hand. “Look, it’s this one here, 1884, watermarked Crown and C.A. See?”

The ballplayer took the stamp in the tweezers from the boy and held it to the light, looking at it awhile with attention. “Nope, I b’lieve you’re dead wrong on that one, Dean. Yep, hit’s 1886 not 1884, and hit’s watermarked Crown and C.C. The cancellation on the other side hides that second letter. You hafta watch out. See, hit’s a C, not an A. That makes a big diff.”

“Aw, gee! The 1884 is worth fourteen bucks. This one is only worth two-fifty. It’s always like that; you find yourself stuck with the cheaper stamp, always. Here, lemme see for myself. Yeah, guess you’re right, though. It’s a C, not an A. Shucks!”

He shivered again.

The nurse came into the room. She held a glass of water on a saucer in her hand. Two pills were on the saucer.

“Time for your medicine, Dean.” She raised her eyebrows at Highpockets, who understood.

“Uhuh.” He slipped off the side of the bed. “Guess mebbe I’d better shoot along.”

“Aw, gee, no. Why don’t you wait? You just came. We’ve only started on these stamps. Don’t go now, please don’t go now.”

“You need your rest, Dean,” said the nurse in nursy tones. “You must sleep, else you won’t get well. Come on now; take these, please.”

“You take yer pills, Dean. I must get moving. Have a mighty tough series coming up, a night game and a double-header the day after, ’count of that postponed game last month. That’s wicked. I need my rest too, same as you. I shore do.” He looked at the boy, whose eyes seemed bigger than ever. Overnight he was a different kid. Perhaps it was the haircut. His hair had been trimmed short with a clipper. No blond mop waved around his forehead now. His eyes seemed bigger. The haircut made a difference in his whole appearance, yet his face was changed also, paler and grimmer. “Y’see, I hafta get my rest same as you,” explained the ballplayer.

“Who you playin’ tomorrow?”

“The Cards.”

“Who’s the Cards?”

“St. Louis.”

“Oh,” he said, sucking slowly on the water and downing one pill with great effort. “Are the Cards good? Do they have a good team?” He finally swallowed the second pill, reluctant to have his visitor depart, even willing to discuss baseball at such a moment.

“I’ll say. Just about the best. They head the league at present; they’re hotter’n a three-alarm fire. O.K. then. I’ll be over in the early afternoon tomorrow. You be a good kid and sleep. An’ do what Miss Simpson tells ya, hear me!”

“Aw, gee. Just when we were getting things done, too. You help me with my Western Australias, will ya? Please, Mr. McDade, before ya go, please ...”

“No, Dean, your mother’ll be in to see you later on.”

“My mother’s dead.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. Yer dad then.”

“My dad! My dad! He doesn’t like stamps. Please stay, Mr. McDade.”

“Not tonight, son. We’ll clean up your Western Australias and maybe the Falkland Islands tomorrow. You need your rest right now. And look, if you’re good, if Miss Simpson tells me over the phone tomorrow the first thing that you’ve taken your shots and your medicine, and slept like a good boy, tell ya what. I’ll bring ya that four penny puce, with the C.A. watermark on it. How’s that!”