Stumptown Kid (6 page)

I walked straight out of Stumptown and down to the river road, the moon lighting my way. Someone had mowed his grass nearby. I like that good, clean smell because it usually means summertime when there’s no school. Cut grass smells like freedom to me.

Nobody’s outside much this time of night, and the street was deserted. The only sounds were the crickets in the grass and the breeze whispering through the trees overhead. Once, the headlights of a car stabbed the darkness a block away, so I ducked behind a tree in case someone in the car knew me and my mom. I didn’t want them asking Mom if I was supposed to be out so late.

I came to the slope above Luther’s camp and made my way down the path through the trees.

When I came to the clearing, I called out, “Luther? Are you here?”

Nobody answered.

Luther’s lean-to was a dark smudge in the shadows near the river. I walked up to it slow so I wouldn’t startle him if he was asleep.

“Luther?”

“What? Charlie?” I turned and saw Luther’s shadowy form sitting on the tree stump outside his lean-to.

He stood up and set something on the stump, then came toward me.

“Hi, Luther.” It was good to see him.

“Does your mama know you’re out this late?” he asked.

“Well …” I didn’t want to lie, but if I told him no, I was positive he’d send me home right away. “I wanted to talk to you.”

He stopped in front of me. “I asked you, boy, if your mama knows you’re here.”

He knew the truth.

“No,” I said. “But I won’t stay long, okay? I just wanted to see you.”

“I’d like to see you, too, Charlie,” Luther said, “but not when you sneak out. I don’t want your mama mad at me.”

I looked past him at the stump where he’d been sitting. “What are you doing?”

“Got me a crystal set,” Luther said. “I was listenin’ to the Cardinals game. They’re playin’ the Cubs tonight.”

“Really?”
I asked. Excitement bloomed inside me. “You’re listening to the game?”

Sometimes after I went to bed at night, Dad and Mom would listen to ball games on the radio out in the living room.

“Where’d you get the crystal set?” I asked him. Will’s brother tried making one once, but it didn’t work too good.

“I made it,” Luther said. “Brought it with me. It’s just an old Quaker Oats box, a crystal, and some wires and stuff.”

“And you can pull in the Cardinals?” I asked. “All the way from St. Louis?”

“On a good night,” Luther answered. “Your town has a strong radio station nearby.”

“Where’s the antenna?”

He turned and pointed. “There’s a wire strung between two trees over there.”

I laughed. “I thought that was where you dried your clothes.”

“That
is
where I dry my clothes, but it’s an antenna, too.” I could see Luther smiling. His white teeth shone under the moonlight. “Want to listen for a minute to the game?” he asked me. “Then you gotta go.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I said.

I followed Luther to the stump.

“Sit down there,” he said. I thought I smelled liquor on him, but he seemed okay. He handed me the earpiece and I listened.

“I don’t hear nothing,” I told him.

“It fades in and out,” Luther said. “Give it a minute.”

Then I heard it. A little voice off in the distance. I couldn’t hear what it was saying. But in a few seconds it got louder, and pretty soon I heard the announcer yell out, “And Musial jacks one out of the park!”

“I can hear it,” I whispered. “Stan the Man just hit a home run!”

Luther beamed in the darkness. He reached down to pick up a bottle on the ground and moved a little ways off. Then he sat on the ground and leaned against a tree. “Pretty nice, ain’t it? No electricity and no batteries, it don’t cost a thing. Just comin’ through the air and wires for free.”

Luther took a drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I shouldn’t oughta drink in front of you, Charlie,” he said. “Your mama wouldn’t like it. Don’t you ever take up drinkin’. It’s not a good habit to get into, y’know.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m not plannin’ on it.”

The game had faded out again, and I put the crystal set on the ground at my feet. I wanted to hear the game, but I was more interested in talking to Luther. I was afraid he’d make me go home, so I said real fast, “Luther, would you tell me about meeting Jackie Robinson?”

“Okay. You ever hear of Satchel Paige?”

“Sure,” I said. “He’s a great pitcher.”

“Well,” Luther said, “I faced ’em both back in forty-five when I was playing for the Memphis Mockingbirds. What a game that was!”

He stopped and took another swallow before going on. “Satchel was pitching. Our number three hitter nubbed one off the end of the bat, and it spun around in the grass like a crazy top for our only base hit. It was a lucky hit, too, ’cause with Satchel’s arm, he could prob’ly throw a strawberry through a freight train.”

“Wow,” I said.

Luther laughed. “Satch didn’t throw nothin’ but smoke that night,” he said. “When he fired his fastball, it hit the catcher’s pud and cracked like a dry stick somebody stomped on. If he would’ve had a changeup, why, our hitters would’ve fallen on their faces in the dirt. And if he had other pitches, we didn’t see ‘em. Fact is, we hardly saw
any
of the pitches. Looked like he was throwin’ aspirin tablets, they come so fast.”

Luther drank again from his bottle. I didn’t even want to breathe and remind Luther I was here so he’d send me home. I just wanted to hear more.

“We had some pretty fair country hitters,” Luther said. “But Satch sawed ’em off on the inside, high and tight. We broke five bats that night. Manager seemed more worried about where we was goin’ to get the money to buy more bats than what Satchel was doin’ to our hitters. He was annihilatin’ ‘em!”

“And Jackie Robinson was there, too?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Luther said. “He was the best stick I ever saw, Charlie. Nobody—and I mean
nobody
—could get a fastball by him. “I was young o’ course, but I could throw heat with the best of ‘em. But first time up, Jackie hit a frozen rope, right up the gut. It went over my head—sounded like bacon sizzlin’. The ball tore up the air and kept risin’ like a kite into the sky till it disappeared into no-man’s-land behind the center-field fence. I mean, he creamed it. So much for Luther Peale’s best fastball in the state of Tennessee! Jackie owned it—and he owned me, too. It was
somethin’.
That ball could only have been caught by one of the dippers up there in the sky.”

He laughed low in his throat.

“The second time Jackie come up,” he said, “I laid my slider right on the outside corner just below the knee. That was the best slider I ever threw. Jackie banana-sliced it down the right field line—it was a chalk shot. It careened out of the corner, heading toward short center field, and passed the charging right fielder. And that was all she wrote.”

Luther smiled and shook his head. “It was a standin’ up inside-the-parker. Ol’ Jackie didn’t even break stride. Third base coach was revolvin’ his arm like a windmill in a tornado, hollerin’ ’Go! Go! Go!’ And the on-deck hitter, with his palms turned toward the sky, was pumping them up and down like he was liftin’ air, sayin’, ‘Stand up! Stand up!’”

A sound like a laugh came out of me. That’s when I realized I was leaning as far forward on the stump as I could without falling off.

“I’m tellin’ you, Charlie, Jackie had
wheels.
His legs looked like tree trunks on the top and fence posts on the bottom. And he run just a little pigeon-toed, too. But he was
flyin’
around those sacks. He touched every base on the inside corner. That dirt was spittin’ from his cleats like grass out the back of a fresh-sharpened lawn mower.”

The way Luther described things, I could see it all happening in my mind.

“I do have somethin’ to be grateful for that night,” Luther said. “In the eighth inning, with three ducks on the pond and two outs, Jackie was due up. Well, the sky opened up like Niagara Falls. Game was called. Four-zip.”

He laughed, took another drink, and leaned his head back against the tree.

“You were lucky to play against Satchel and Jackie,” I said.

“Sure was.”

“How’d you hurt your arm?” I asked him.

He didn’t say nothing for so long, I wondered if he would answer. I couldn’t see him too good while he sat in the shadows, and I even wondered if he’d gone to sleep.

But after a minute, he said, “Well, Charlie, I guess I ought to tell you the truth about that.”

The way he said it made me curious. I had a feeling there was something bad tied up with what happened.

“It was an exhibition game we were playin’ against the Nashville Lions. They’re a white team—barnstormers, they call ‘em. They travel around and play other teams.

“I was pitchin’. A player by the name of Sam Brody come up to bat. He’d been drinkin’ and was pretty well gone.” Luther held up his bottle. “Tennessee moonshine, Charlie. It’s powerful stuff. Like I said, don’t ever get started.”

I shook my head and said it again. “I won’t.”

“Well, this Sam Brody come up to bat, an’ he was so snockered, he couldn’t hardly stand up straight. He was tauntin’ me, callin’ me names, bad names. I threw him a fastball—like I said, I was a powerful pitcher—but his head was hangin’ over the plate, and the ball hit him hard right in the head. It was a good pitch—not wild. The ump called a strike, and Sam Brody dropped like a sack o’ bricks on the ground.”

“Was he hurt bad?” I asked.

Luther sat quiet for a minute. When he started talking again, I noticed that his words were getting slurred together.

“Sam’s brother was there,” Luther said. “Ruckus was his name. Or nickname, I guess. He made a ruckus wherever he went, they told me. Well, Ruckus Brody come up and started yellin’ at me, threatenin’ to kill me. By this time, the sheriff was there. The ump told the sheriff it was a good pitch. So the sheriff took me off a ways and said, ‘I suggest you make yourself scarce for a while.’

“I went home, but that night, a player come by and told me Sam died at the hospital, and Ruckus was comin’ after me. My daddy give me some money and told me to get goin’. So I hopped a freight train comin’ this way, and I jumped off here in Holden.”

I tried to put all this together in my mind. “What about your arm?” I asked.

In the dim light, I saw Luther shrug his big shoulders. “I don’t know, Charlie,” he said quietly. “Ever since I threw that pitch that killed Sam Brody, I haven’t been able to move it so good.”

So he couldn’t play ball anymore. That must have made him feel even more terrible.

“I’m sorry about your arm,” I said. “But you didn’t mean to kill Sam. He was drunk, and you threw a good pitch.”

“Yeah,” Luther said. He sighed heavily. “But I can’t get used to the idea that I killed a man, even by accident.” He held up the bottle. “I didn’t start drinkin’ this stuff until that day.”

He got quiet again. I sat there and tried to think of what to say. Nothing came into my head. I finally decided to change the subject, so I said, “I have some of my dad’s war medals from Korea. He was with the 9th Infantry Regiment. He saved a friend’s life when they were fighting near the Naktong River. You want to come over sometime and see his medals?”

But Luther didn’t answer. He was asleep, still leaning against the tree and snoring. I got up and went over to him.

“Get up, Luther,” I said, “I’ll help you to the lean-to.” He stirred and muttered something. “Come on,” I whispered.

I pulled at him till he got to his feet, grumbling words I couldn’t understand. He leaned heavy on my shoulder, and we walked slow over to the lean-to. I felt a blanket under my feet and had him lie down.

“’Night, Luther,” I said when he was on the ground. “Thanks for tellin’ me about Satchel and Jackie.”

He muttered again and breathed heavy in his sleep.

I stood up.

“It was good seein’ you again,” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

Then I walked out of the lean-to, climbed the slope, and headed for home.

The heat the next day was terrible. By noon it was nearly ninety degrees, so I walked down to the river to cool off. All the while I was thinking about Luther and what he had told me the night before about accidentally killing that hitter from the Nashville Lions.

I decided not to tell Mom about it. At least not for now. I could tell she liked Luther, but it would make her nervous. I didn’t want to take the chance that she’d say I couldn’t see him.

It sure was strange that after Luther hit the guy with his pitch, he couldn’t use that arm anymore. How could that happen? It didn’t make sense to me.

I decided to go to the storm sewer to see if anyone was there. It’s the place where the rainwater from the streets in this part of town dumps into the river. The mouth of the storm sewer is about twelve foot across. It’s a huge, round opening made of cement and bricks. It goes back into a steep slope and turns into a tunnel under the streets of Holden.

A little ways inside, the storm sewer gets smaller and is made of cement tiles. It’s still big enough that I can run through it for a while, though. I’ve followed it underground for about a half mile till it gets so small, I have to crawl. Every block or so, there’s a manhole overhead, so I can climb out whenever I feel like it.

Mom wouldn’t like it if she knew.

The best reason for spending time in the storm sewer during the summer is that it’s real cool, even better than movie-theater air conditioning. Most of us Stumptown kids head down there on the hottest summer days and hang around at the mouth of it where all that cold air heaves out of the ground.

Will, Johnny, and Eileen were there when I got to the river. I felt a little bit funny seeing Will. He said, “Hey, Charlie,” with the rest of them, but then he looked away.

I said hey back. I wondered if he was sorry he didn’t stick up for me yesterday against Lobo. Maybe he was wondering if I’d bring it up.

They had pulled our two wooden planks out of the brush and set them over the curving damp bottom of the storm sewer floor so they could sit in comfort. We found those planks in a ditch three summers ago. They’re both wide enough to seat two people. Eileen and Johnny had one, and Will sat on the other.

“Come on and sit down, Charlie,” Eileen said, so I sat on Will’s plank. He sort of smiled and moved over to give me more room.

Eileen had short, dark hair, and she was pretty. I’d never thought about what she looked like until one day about two weeks ago when she was playing second base. She dove for a ball that Finn threw her, and she landed with her stomach over the base a half-second before my toe touched a corner of it under her armpit. She sat up, laughing, and her eyes narrowed to little crescent moons. That’s when I noticed that she’d gotten pretty sometime since the last time I looked at her. I was surprised, seeing that. She’d always been one of the guys, though, and that’s the way she wanted it.

“Hey, Charlie,” Johnny said. “You seen Lobo since yesterday? All of us were just talkin’ about what happened.”

My stomach lurched at the sound of Lobo’s name. Will was watching me, but he turned his head again when I looked over at him. I thought he seemed ashamed. That made me feel a little better.

Johnny laughed. “Boy, you sure clobbered him, Charlie!” he said. “He got what was comin’ to him, that’s for sure.”

“No, I haven’t seen him,” I said. Then I turned to Will and said, “You like playin’ ball with him?”

He shrugged. “Lobo’s a good player.” He rubbed a spot of dirt on the plank we were sitting on. “But he can be a jerk sometimes.”

“You mean, sometimes he’s
not
a jerk?” Eileen asked.

Will gave out a sudden laugh like he hadn’t meant to. He glanced up at me for a second. “He shouldn’ta picked on you guys yesterday.”

Eileen did the talking for me. “How come you didn’t tell him to cut it out?” she asked.

Will hesitated, and Johnny chimed in. “Heck, Lobo woulda
killed
Will if he had.”

“That right?” I asked him. “Would he’ve killed you?”

Will shrugged. “Maybe.” He frowned then, and said almost in a whisper, “Sorry I didn’t say anything.”

Those were about the best words he could say. Will must have been a little scared of Lobo, too, and I couldn’t blame him. Besides, they were playing on the same team now.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I sure hope he don’t make good on his threat, though, and kill me.” It came out sounding too much like a little kid, so I said like I was joking, “But I got my PF Flyers on just in case.”

Eileen laughed. “Yeah, you might need to ’run faster and jump higher,’ like they say on the radio.” Then she added with a wave of her hand, “He’s not gonna kill you, Charlie. That’s just talk. He’s got a mouth as big as Linn County.”

“As big as the whole state of Iowa,” Johnny said.

Eileen laughed. “The world.”

“The universe!” I added.

I laughed along with them, but I was still scared at the thought of seeing Lobo again.

“Hey, Charlie, you were doin’ some good pitching in the workup yesterday,” Eileen said.

“Thanks,” I replied. “I learned some stuff from a new friend of mine. His name’s Luther. You guys should meet him.”

“Did he just move here?” Eileen asked.

“He’s a grown-up,” I said. “He was a pitcher for the Memphis Mockingbirds. They’re a team in the Negro League.”

“Really?” Johnny said. “Where’d you meet him?”

“At Wildcats tryouts,” I said. “He was watching us.”

Will nodded. “Oh, yeah, I remember seeing him sitting on the bleacher.”

“So when did you start practicing with the Wildcats?” I asked him.

“Last night,” he said. “Coach Hennessey’s real tough, and he has favorites, like Brad Lobo. He’s good at coaching, though.”

“Well, look who’s here!”

I jerked around to see Brad Lobo himself, with two of his buddies. They were coming down the hillside toward the river. I never see Lobo around the river because he don’t live in Stumptown or even close.

I was so surprised and scared at seeing him that my mouth went dry and didn’t work at first. Finally, I said—and it came out more like a whisper—”What’re you doin’ here?”

“What do you think?” Lobo said, sneering. “Looking for
you,
Snothead. We got a score to settle.”

He stood there with his fists on his hips like he was Superman or something. I stood up, my mind racing around in circles, trying to think of a way out of this. I stood up and glanced at Will, hoping he’d say something this time.

But it was Johnny who stuck up for me. “Come on, Lobo,” he said. “It’s not a fair match. You got about fifteen pounds on Charlie here.”

Then Will said, “Yeah,” but it came out weak and soft.

“That didn’t stop him yesterday,” Lobo said.

Eileen laughed. “Sure didn’t.”

I wished she hadn’t said that, because Lobo’s face turned a deep red. He started screaming and ran at me.

Without even thinking, I ran into the storm sewer, away from Lobo.

I ran as if my life depended on it, which it probably did. It’s real dark underground, and after sitting in the bright sunlight, I couldn’t see anything. My ears were filled with the sound of my own puffing breath and the slap of the cement under my sneakers. It smelled musty and damp, too, and every breath I pulled in felt heavy and cold.

Every now and then the sound changed a tiny bit, and I knew I was running past openings that fed into the main tunnel. I wished they were bigger so I could run into one of them, and maybe Lobo would run right past me and on up the tunnel.

I didn’t turn back to see where Lobo was till I’d run about a half block underground.

Finally, still running, I whipped my head around to look behind me. I could see the small light from the opening of the storm sewer way down at the end. I thought I’d see a silhouette of Lobo running between me and the light. But he wasn’t there.

Where was he?

I stopped, breathing hard, and stared at the light. I could see Eileen, Will, and Johnny standing in the opening like small plastic soldiers. They were looking this way, I’m sure trying to see me. But it’s impossible to see anything this far into the tunnel.

Lobo must not have wanted to follow me into the dark of the storm sewer. If he’d never been in it before, he probably lost his nerve.

I suddenly felt ashamed for running away. Eileen and Johnny wouldn’t congratulate me this time. All I did was act like a scared rabbit, scampering down its rabbit hole. Will would probably understand, though. He’d been too scared to say much to Lobo himself.

A tiny pinpoint of light was shining from above me a little ways off. That meant there would be a manhole overhead where I could climb out.

I walked to the manhole. Above me, iron bars like giant staples were cemented into the concrete. Last summer was the first year I was tall enough to reach the lowest one. Before that, I climbed on Will’s back. Anyway, I grabbed it and pulled myself up, then pushed my shoulder into the heavy manhole covering. It moved, and I shoved it to the side, climbed out, and pushed it back. I was in the field next to Hayes School.

The sunlight was blinding. It took a full minute before I could stop squinting.

I took a deep breath, and the air around me was hot and heavy. Feeling heavy myself from shame and embarrassment, I trudged home.

* * *

When I got to my front stoop, I opened the milk box and pulled out the two glass bottles. We get two quarts of milk delivered every day, and it’s my job to bring them inside. It was good I remembered to bring them in right away. Even with all the insulation in the metal box, the milk would turn bad pretty fast on a day as hot as this one.

I was putting the milk in the Frigidaire when the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Charlie.” It was Will.

“Hey.” I’d been hoping he’d call, but I wasn’t sure if he would. I wanted to hear what he’d say about Lobo. Maybe he’d say he didn’t blame me for running, that he was kind of scared of him, too.

“You wanna get some kids together and play workup at the park later?” he asked.

It was too hot to play, but I didn’t want to look like the biggest sissy in Holden, so I said, “Sure.”

“Okay.” Then there was a long silence.

“Hey, Will?”

“Yeah?”

“What did Lobo do? I mean, after I ran into the tunnel?” I had to know.

“Oh, he just said some stuff and left. I bet he’d never been in the storm sewer before.”

“Oh.”

A week ago, Will would’ve called him a chicken.

There was a
click
on the line. Then old Mrs. Whitley said, “Who’s there?”

I sighed. “It’s me, Mrs. Whitley. I’m gettin’ off the phone in a second, okay?”

“Well, hurry up, then,” she said. “I have to order my groceries.” She hung up.

“I swear,” I said to Will. “We have the crabbiest people on this party line. And they’re all a bunch of busybodies. You never know who’s listenin’ in.”

“I heard that, Charlie Nebraska!” It was Lucy Stetton, a girl in our class. Her family was on the party line with us and Mrs. Whitley.

“Get off the phone, Lucy!” I yelled at her.

“Too bad you ran away from Brad Lobo,” she said before slamming the phone down hard.

Great. Now the whole town would know what a chicken I am.

“What time we playin’ workup?” I asked Will.

“Four-thirty,” Will said. “The McNally guys have to help their mom move furniture this afternoon so they can paint the living room.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you.” I started to hang up. “And, um, Will?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you still want to play ball with us,” I said.

“Oh,” Will said. “Okay. See ya.” He hung up.

I’d wanted him to say,
Sure, I’d rather play with you guys.

I wondered if he liked playing with the Wildcats better than us.

It was only two o’clock, so I had a couple hours to kill. When I heard the buzz and bells of Herman’s ice cream cart, I grabbed a nickel from my bank and ran outside.

Herman has a lame leg, but he can drive his cart since it’s mounted on a motorbike.

“Hey, Herman!” I called. I stopped at the curb and waved my arms.

He waggled a hand and pulled up next to me.

I don’t know Herman’s last name, but we always talk baseball when we do business. I never see him without his St. Louis Cardinals cap. It’s dark with dirt, but he said he got it at a game in St. Louis in forty-seven and he’s never throwing it away. Or washing it, either, probably. He always has stubble growing on his chin and cheeks, like he can’t be bothered to shave more than every few days.

“I want a grape Popsicle, please,” I said.

“That’ll be a nickel,” Herman said, opening the frosty top of his cart. I stuck my face in to feel the cold air, but he pushed me out of the way. “Don’t breathe in there, kid. You hear the Cardinals game last night?”

“I heard when Stan Musial hit a home run,” I said. “That was pretty exciting. What was the final score?”

“The Cards walloped the Cubs, six to zero,” he said. He grinned and showed the hole where his front tooth should have been. He raised an eyebrow. “I hear you had to run from that Lobo kid this morning.”

Geesh. Bad news travels at lightning speed around Stumptown.

“You were talkin’ to Lucy just now, huh?” I said, scowling.

Herman shrugged. “She bought a Frosty Ice Cream Bar. How’s your mom?”

“Fine,” I said.

“She still seein’ that salesman?” he asked.

I scowled again. Seemed Herman sure had to know everything. “Yeah. So?”

“They gonna get married? Your mom and the salesman? What’s his name?”

“Vern Jardine,” I said. “Why’re you so interested?”

“Just wonderin’, that’s all,” Herman said. “Maybe he’ll adopt you, and you’ll inherit all his money. You’d have to change your name, probably.”

“I’d never change my name,” I told him. “My dad’s name is Nebraska, and that’s the only name I’ll ever have.”

“Not if that fella adopts you.” Herman got on his bike and started up his motor again. “Charlie Jardine. That’s not too bad. Well, see ya.”

He rode away.

I watched him go. If it wasn’t for those grape Popsicles, I wouldn’t care if I never saw Herman again. He’s the nosiest person I ever met, and he spreads gossip like wind spreads a wildfire.