The House of Daniel (20 page)

The howl came from right around the corner. A second later, so did the werewolf. It charged right at us. No matter we were a whole team—nothing much can hurt a werewolf. But it can sure hurt you, and it wants to when the fit is on it.

Nothing much can hurt it. Not nothing, it turns out. Fidgety Frank reached into his pocket and flung something at the critter. Caught it right in the nose. And the beast let out another howl, a horrible one, and turned around and ran like the dickens.

Fidgety Frank walked over to where it had been and picked up whatever he'd thrown. “What did you do?” I asked him. I wasn't the only one, either.

He opened his hand. A half-dollar sat on his palm. “Werewolves hate silver,” he said, “so I gave him some.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Wes said. “Where'd you get an idea like that?”

Frank looked faintly embarrassed, as though he'd got caught looking at dirty pictures or something. “Read a story in a rag called
Amazing
by a hack named Iverson, I think it was. Some guy drove off a werewolf that way in it. I thought it was a good idea, and I guess I was right.”

“I guess you were!” Wes said. “I gotta remember that.”

“Yeah.” Fidgety Frank stuck the coin back in his pocket. He sighed. “Best fastball I threw all day, too, dammit.”

 

(IX)

Go to Hobbs and you're almost back in Texas. I didn't even think about that when the bus chugged out of Artesia early in the morning. It's, oh, seventy miles from one place to the other. A couple of hours on the highway. Only you don't stay on the highway. If you do, you end up in Lovington instead.

Nope. A few miles after you go through the tiny little town of Loco Hills, you swing onto the right fork of the road instead of the left. The left is the one that keeps on being US 82. The right … You go on for a ways, and then the paving stops. It's not dirt all the way from there to Hobbs, but it is for something close to twenty miles.

We had to stop once, to jack up the bus and fix a blowout. It was hot. The sun sledgehammered down. It was dryer than dry. I was helping to work the jack. I've done things I enjoyed more.

We were about through when the car under an oncoming cloud of dust turned out to have cops in it. I was glad to see 'em, which'll tell you something about how frazzled I was. “Sorry we didn't get here sooner,” one of them said.

Harv wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I bet you are.”

“We would've lent a hand.” The cop turned to his partner. “Wouldn't we, Winslow?”

“Sure. You bet.” By the way Winslow said it, he was lying and didn't care if we believed him or not. The other cop gave him a look. Winslow sounded a little friendlier when he went on, “Wouldn't want the buzzards and the coyotes squabbling over your bones.” He mostly didn't talk like a Texan, but he said
kye
-
oats
the way they did.

Buzzards
were
circling up above us now. They weren't after Frank's arm. They were hoping for the whole team. They'd flown over this road often enough to know that, when cars and things had to stop along it, they got a decent chance for the blue-plate special.

The cop who wasn't Winslow said, “I've seen the House of Daniel play before. You're good. You heading for Hobbs?”

“Sure are,” Harv said. Where else would we be going on that horrible road?

“I'm from Artesia myself,” the cop said. “I hope you knock the stuffing out of the Boosters. Now, as long as you're all okey-dokey, Winslow and me are gonna mosey along.”

“You do that,” Harv said, along with something less charitable under his breath.

Off drove the cops. They left their own trail of dust behind. It wasn't a dust devil, but it made you think of one.

We piled back into the bus. One thing playing ball every afternoon will do is give you a suntan. I knew a fellow back in Enid who was so blond and so pink, he couldn't do it. He wouldn't tan at all. He'd burn and peel and burn and peel till finally he had to hang up his glove—he couldn't stand it any more. These days, a lot of towns have lights for their ballparks and play under 'em as often as not. Wasn't like that even those few years ago, though.

Our adventure with the tire cost us half an hour. Harv couldn't step on the gas, the way I know he wanted to. On that rutted dirt track, he would've had another flat in jig time, or else pieces would've started falling off the undercarriage. So he just drove along, taking things easy even if he didn't like it. When somebody going the other way came by, he slowed down even more till he got past the dust the truck or the Model T kicked up.

I know those twenty miles on dirt only seemed like forever. If they really were, I'd still be on 'em, I guess, like the Flying Dutchman only in a bus instead of a boat. I also know we all cheered when we got on US 62—which is the same as US 180 on that stretch—to finish the run to Hobbs. Could be asphalt's never got itself a bigger hand.

Hobbs isn't even five miles from the Texas line. We were closer to Midland and Odessa again than we were to Las Cruces and La Mesa. When I wondered out loud about that, Eddie said, “Don't try to keep a map of where all we're going in your head, Snake. It'll drive you screwy—well, screwier. It looks like the belly marks a real snake leaves in the dirt. It does if he's drunk before he starts going, I mean.”

“When I want to know what you think, Eddie, I'll kick it out of you,” Harv called from the driver's seat, so he'd overheard us. “Long as we're in Denver for the start of the
Post
tournament, everything's fine.”

We stayed at a motor lodge in Hobbs. US 62 (or 180, if you'd rather) runs west and a little south toward Carlsbad, so there is a paved road there. It just wasn't the one we'd been on. The old man running the motor lodge was glad to see us. Most of his cabins stood empty, so I expect he would've been glad to see anybody.

“People been askin' about y'all, askin' when the House of Daniel was comin' to town,” he told Harv. “They want to know what y'all are up to.” Yeah, we were by the Texas line, all right. By the way he talked, he'd grown up on the other side of it.

Harv puffed out his chest. Any farther and he would've busted off some buttons. “Everybody wants to know when the House of Daniel is coming to town,” he said grandly. “It's true in plenty of places bigger than this.”

I was proud of myself, to be part—even a little part—of such a famous team. I was when I heard the old man go on like that, anyhow. Later, I had me a different notion about why those people were asking about the House of Daniel. But that was later. I didn't have it then, when it might've done me some good. You never have those notions quick enough to help you. It's always later, when you can see why you should've had 'em sooner.

We got into our uniforms and went aboard the bus one more time. You spend more time riding here and there and back and forth than you do playing ball, let me tell you.

Well, it wasn't a long trip from the motor lodge to League Park. Hobbs is growing like a weed—that was what the guys who'd been there before said—but it's not big enough for anything in town to be too far from anything else. Don't ask me why they call their ballyard League Park. They've never been in a pro league. New Mexico semipro ball is hot stuff, though. We'd already seen that.

When we got inside, everybody groaned. Yeah, it was another one of
those
ballparks. Honest to Pete, I don't know why they built so many of 'em that way out in West Texas and New Mexico. They're high up out there. The air's already thin and dry. The ball flies like nobody's business. So how come they play in so many stupid little bandboxes? I guess they just like to watch balls sailing over the fence.

“Hope you got your hitting shoes on, boys,” Wes said when he saw the numbers painted on the outfield wall. It was 340 down the left-field line in League Park. Okey-doke, that's an honest poke. Not long, but honest. But it was only 345 to center and 290 to the right-field line. They plopped another field on a lot too small to hold it.

“Just play your regular game, guys,” Harv told us. “Don't air it out swinging for the fences. You don't got to. Plenty of balls'll leave this yard any which way, and you won't mess up your swing trying to do too much.”

Harv was full of good advice. He usually was. Here, though, how could you talk somebody into
not
whaling away with all his might? It was like putting a turkey dinner in front of a starving man and telling him to take little bites and chew his food real good.

I watched the Boosters taking their hacks before the game. They all swung with an uppercut. They were sure going for the downs with every cut. Well, this was their home grounds. They played half their games here. The House of Daniel couldn't afford to try and smash everything. That style just doesn't work when you use it in a bigger place.

“Maybe even we'll pick up some homers here,” I said to Eddie. Along with Azariah, we were the smallest, slimmest guys on the team.

“Maybe we will. I don't know if I want to or not, though,” he said. “I start trying to hit 'em out, most of 'em won't make it.” Anybody'd think he'd been listening to Harv or something.

Harv wasn't watching the Boosters, not right then. He was looking into the stands. He didn't fancy what he saw, either. “We've got a full house, and that's good,” he muttered. “But I don't think this place'll hold more than thirteen hundred, fourteen tops, even if they stuff 'em in sideways. Miserable park's too small all the way around.” I would've guessed the crowd for bigger—it was plenty loud—but you couldn't beat Harv at counting the house.

A few of the faces in the crowd were swarthy and Mexican. There weren't any faces like that on the town team. No black faces, either. Well, even the one on a mostly white team had surprised me plenty. But I remembered again that Texas started just the other side of Hobbs.

We got three in the top of the first. One ball went over the fence and one banged off it. In the bottom of that frame, Wes served up his own gopher ball. But it was a solo shot, and the Boosters didn't get anything more then. Still, you could tell what kind of game we'd have.

I led off our half of the second. I hit a fly to center. I hit it pretty hard—didn't crush it or anything. Most ballparks, it would've been a medium-deep out. There, it ticked off the top of the fence and went over. The Boosters' pitcher flipped his glove in the air—that's how disgusted he was. I hustled around the bases. Not like I had much practice at a home-run trot.

Nobody talked to me when I got back to the dugout. Nobody even looked at me. Then all the guys pounded on me and made a racket. It was my first long ball on the team, and they made sure I'd remember it.

A couple of innings later, I went hard into that center-field fence, trying to catch a liner that should've been an easy out. It banged into the wood a couple of feet over my glove. Fidgety Frank was playing right. He got the ball and held their runner to a single. Center and right were so short, if any outfielder had the ball you couldn't go for second 'cause you'd get nailed.

“You all right?” he asked me after he threw it in.

“I'll live.” I'd have a new bruise to go with the one from where the Las Cruces pitcher hit me, but what can you do? Was I thinking
Wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful
, too? Oh, you bet I was.

Frank swatted me on the can with his glove. “Way to hustle, Snake.” He walked back to his spot in right.

We staggered through that inning without giving up any more runs. I felt like a guy in a saloon brawl when a haymaker just misses his chin. Another one'll be coming his way any second, likely from an angle he doesn't expect.

In the bigs and the top minors, they play 1-0, 2-1, 3-2 games all the time. Well, we'd had a 2-0 game ourselves back in Las Cruces. Most semipro matchups aren't like that, though. It's next to impossible to play a 2-0 game in a place like League Park. And, even if I hate to say it, semipro players aren't as good. They won't get balls that big-leaguers can reach. If they do get to 'em, they're more likely to kick 'em or throw 'em away. More runs go up on the scoreboard when they do.

Baseball is hard to play well. You watch most big-league games, they go so smooth they almost make you forget that. You watch semipros and it shows more. Hate to say that, too, but it's true.

So we didn't have one of those neat, tidy games in Hobbs. It wound up 12-8, with us on top. The Boosters started throwing at us the last couple of innings, when they saw they wouldn't catch up. Wes took care of that. He hit their cleanup man right in the knee. The guy had to hop down to first base on his good leg. He never once rubbed it—I will say that. But they had to take him out and put in a pinch-runner. I hoped Wes didn't break his kneecap … but I wouldn't have cried if he did. They started it.

Things got a little testy after the game, too. We didn't brawl the way we had in Texas, but there was none of the
Good game
and
Attaboy
and things like that that you hear a lot of the time. They didn't like us, we didn't like them, and neither side tried very hard to hide it.

We didn't go out to supper with 'em, either, the way we do some of the time. They went their way and we went ours. We'd leave town the next morning, and they wouldn't miss us one bit. I wondered whether Harv would come back to Hobbs next year. For them, this was a big crowd. For us? Nope. Harv didn't dock me, so we must've made expenses, but we couldn't have done better than break even.

*   *   *

Somebody knocked on my door in the middle of the night. Took a while to wake me. You're tuckered out after a long bus ride and a ballgame, especially when you know you've got to get up early for another bus ride and another ballgame the next day. When you helped fix a flat on the bus and baked your brains out in the sun for that, you're double tuckered.