The House of Daniel (9 page)

The landlady had a big chicken stew going—well, more potatoes and cabbage and carrots than bird, but you could find some. We ate up, piled into the bus, and went on over to Road Runner Park for the ballgame.

*   *   *

“Hitting eighth,” Harv shouted through the megaphone, “in center, number fourteen, Jack ‘the Snake' Spivey!”

Nobody'd ever called me
Snake
before, never once. Harv didn't care. He wanted folks to notice you and to remember you. The Pampa fans noticed, all right. They booed and they whistled. For me, some of them hissed, too. Fans do that stuff. I paid 'em no special mind, not unless they started throwing things. Razzing the road team's part of the fun.

We got a run in the top of the first. We might've got more, but their third baseman took a double away from us and left the bases full. I was in the on-deck circle when that happened. I got my glove and trotted out to center field.

They went down in order. Nothing came my way. They could've put a doorknob out there and it wouldn't've made any difference. I trotted back in, took a few cuts while their pitcher loosened up, and climbed into the box.

I took a ball. I took a strike. Next one was a belt-high fastball. I swung, but I got under it a little. Lazy fly to medium left-center. I hustled down to first, hoping their left fielder would drop it. Happens every once in a while, even in the bigs. Didn't happen then. I went back to the dugout. Would've been nice to do something good my first try. No such luck, though.

“Tell you something?” Eddie Lelivelt said when I sat down beside him.

“Sure.”

“Your bottom arm looks kind of floppy when you're up there. You might pull the bat back a little, straighten the arm out some. Maybe you'd drive the ball better.”

I'd hit the way I hit for as long as I'd played. Nobody'd ever said anything about it. It was good enough for the Enid Eagles. For the House of Daniel? I was batting eighth. They saw I wasn't likely to scare many people the way I was. So what did I have to lose? “Thanks,” I said. “I'll give it a try.”

Next inning, I cut off a single before it could sneak through, and got the ball back in quick enough to make sure it stayed a single. The All Star who hit it took a big turn, but he had to jam on the brakes and back up. Eddie flashed me a thumbs-up. That felt good. I caught the last out, too, not that it was any kind of tough play.

When I went to the on-deck circle again, I tried the new stance. I pulled the bat back till my left elbow almost locked. It felt different, all right, but not too bad. I came up with a man on second and two outs. Did I want to drive in that run? Oh, maybe a little bit.

Ump said the first pitch caught the inside corner. “Wish you'd give that to our guy, too,” I said without turning my heard.

“Nobody cares what you wish, furry boy,” he told me. What I wished then was that I'd kept quiet. I could tell I wouldn't have a skinny strike zone from then on. Well, I hadn't had one before, either.

He did call the next one a ball. It was higher than the button on my cap. The one after that wasn't, so it turned into a strike no matter how wide it was. The All Stars' pitcher kinda grinned. He saw what was going on. He came in on my hands, figuring anything halfway close would be a strike.

But you've got to make your pitch. Guys who play for big money can't do it all the time. This was just an oil-field worker picking up spare change on the diamond. It was over the inside corner, not six inches inside the way he wanted. I hit a hard grounder into the hole between third and short. The third baseman dove. The shortstop tried to backhand. The ball squirted into the outfield. The runner on second scored. I scooted into second myself when the throw from left went over the catcher's head and the pitcher, backing up the play, kicked the ball around.

Guys from the House of Daniel whooped and hollered in our dugout. The crowd at Road Runner Park sat on their hands. Crowds come out to see their team lick you. They don't like it so much when you lick them.

The Pampa All Stars got a run back, then tied the game on a homer that may be going yet. Hang a slow curve and that's what happens. Wes kicked at the dirt on the mound. But we got three in the seventh—I chipped in with a bloop to right. Looks like a line drive in the box score, they say. We took the game, 5-3.

“We'll get you next time you come to town,” a grumpy All Star said.

“Maybe you will,” I answered. You don't want to tick 'em off any more than beating 'em already did. And who could say? Maybe they would. They weren't as good as my old Eagles, but maybe they would anyhow. Their pitcher hot, ours off, a few balls falling in, an error where it hurt most … That could do it. It could, but odds were it wouldn't. Even with me in center and Fidgety Frank playing right, the House of Daniel was a better ballclub.

“You bums!” somebody yelled from the grandstand.

“Yankee bums!” somebody else added.

They could yell—they'd paid their four bits. House of Daniel didn't go for quarter seats, the way a lot of semipro teams did. They figured they were good, and people would pay more to watch 'em on account of they were. They were right, too. We had a nice house. Only three or four thousand folks in Pampa, but there are some farms outside and littler towns not too far off. We made decent money.

Harv paid me my ten bucks before I even asked him. Can't hardly ask for better than that. I tucked the bill into a little suede pouch I wore under my shirt on a thong around my neck—a grouch bag, they call it. Lots of semipros have 'em. Best way to keep your money safe.

“Good job,” Harv said. “You've got an idea out there, don't you?”

“Well, I try,” I said, feeling better than good. I don't have all the tools to play top-level ball, so I have to make the most of what I do have. Nice to see somebody noticed.

Eddie Lelivelt ambled over. He got more than ten dollars—I know that. “What do you think of straightening your arm that way?” he asked.

“Didn't hurt. I'm sure of that,” I answered. “Might've helped. I'll keep doing it for a while, see what I think—see if I get used to it, too.”

“All right. Glad it didn't mess you up, anyway,” he said. “Sometimes when you do something new, it's like you're screwing yourself into the ground.” He turned to Harv. “We going over to Miss Louise's after the game?”

“Once we clean up? Sure,” Harv said. I felt like cheering. No, Miss Louise's isn't a sporting house, even if it sounds like one. The meat they serve there's already cooked—falling-off-the-bone barbecue, some of the best anywhere. I was going to tell the House of Daniel fellas about it if they didn't already know, but they did.

Bathroom in the roominghouse was down at the end of the hall. Yeah, one of those places. By the time my turn came—I was low man on the totem pole, naturally—the salamander that hotted up the water was plumb tuckered out. On a May afternoon in the Texas Panhandle, you mind that less than you would some other places.

Some of my fake whiskers came off in the tub, but nowhere near all. I went back to my room looking like a sorry case of mange. “Have anything to make your blasted spirit gum say uncle?” I asked Eddie.

“Try some of this. Rub it on a cloth and then over your face.” He handed me a bottle of greenish gunk. When I pulled the cork, it smelled something like witch hazel and something like what a colored herb woman'd cook up if she didn't like you so much.

But it worked, whatever it was. “Thanks,” I said, and started to give it back to Eddie.

“Hang on to it,” he told me. “You're the one who'll be using it till your own whiskers get long enough so you don't need the false ones.”

So we ate. And we ate. And we ate some more. By the time we got through, you could've built a cow and a pig and a flock of chickens from the bones on the table. Miss Louise had smiled when we came in. She'd said, “Good to see y'all. Not a lot of folks with money to spend.”

“Even in an oil town like this?” Harv asked.

“Things are better here than some places,” Miss Louise said, “but they ain't what you'd call good. People hunker down, fix their own eats—it's cheaper'n goin' out. So customers are hard to come by.”

Pampa was better off than Ponca City, no doubt about that. The oil wells here were newer, and paying better. But if a place as good as Miss Louise's had trouble staying full, it was hurting, all right.

I rubbed my stomach. If I ate like that all the time, I wouldn't fit into Double-Double's uniform for long. “Where do we go next?” I asked. I figured maybe Borger northwest of Pampa—the two little towns get along like Ponca City and Enid. Anything one does, the other reckons it does better. When the Eagles played Pampa, they usually played Borger the same weekend. Not even forty miles from one to the other.

But Harv said, “Amarillo. We've got a game tomorrow against the Metros.”

“All right.” I sounded as easy about it as I could. Amarillo's not a great big city. It's bigger than Enid, but not by a lot. The Eagles never dared square off against the Metros, though. They were out of our league too many ways.

Back before the Big Bubble popped, the Metros played in the Western League for a couple of years. That's real pro ball—Class A, same as the Texas League, the league where the Steers wouldn't sign me 'cause I wasn't good enough. Even after they didn't stick, they barnstormed against teams in both those circuits.

I must not've been as calm as I tried for. Harv kind of grinned at me. “If God wants us to beat 'em, we'll beat 'em,” he sad. “And if He's got other plans, His will be done.”

“Amen,” Eddie Lelivelt said, and some of the other guys nodded.

I knew the House of Daniel was a churchy team, but they hadn't done any preaching to the heathen that I'd seen. They hadn't done any preaching at me. I knew that for sure. I'm not a heathen, but I'm on that road. Hey, anybody who's seen a salamander or a dust devil knows there are Powers. Just what those Powers are and Who calls the shots amongst 'em—that's where the arguing starts.

“We'll sleep here tonight, go on over in the morning,” Harv said. I liked that idea. I'd sleep better at the roominghouse than on the bus. It wouldn't have been a trip like the one from Ponca City, though. Amarillo's farther from Pampa than Borger is, but just a little.

When we were walking back from Miss Louise's, somebody stuck his head out the window of a flivver and yelled, “Crazy longhairs!” But he kept going. He went faster after he yelled, matter of fact. We might've been crazy longhairs—well, except for me, and I was gonna head that way—but there were more than a dozen of us. Bad odds for a would-be tough guy, even in his home town.

Amarillo! The Metros! I should have got into trouble with Big Stu sooner. I came up in the world because I did. Who would've thunk it?

*   *   *

Metro Park is a real ballyard. They built it when they went into the Western League. It has a big old wooden grandstand—they figured they'd pack 'em in for Saturday games and Sunday doubleheaders. What you look for isn't always what you get, though. I knew about that—too right I did. Not putting enough fannies in the seats was part of why they dropped out of pro ball.

Because it's a real ballyard, it even had dressing rooms. The visitors' clubhouse was about as big as an outhouse, but it was there. We could dress in it if we didn't mind elbowing each other while we did. Bigger places have lockers to stash your street clothes. Metro Park had nails in the planking. It was still better than no place to dress at all.

We got booed when we went out to limber up. You always do on the road, and the House of Daniel was always on the road. I took my swings at the plate, then went out to shag flies. I caught one and threw it in. Then I said, “That's funny,” to Wes, who was standing pretty close to me out there.

“What is?” he asked.

“They've got a colored section down the line.” I pointed to the black folks sitting there. Amarillo has quite a few coloreds. They've got their own ballclub—the Sandies, they call it. They play in a little park on the edge of town against other Negro teams. They're nothing fancy, any more than the Metros are in the white scheme of things, but they play.

“I know. All the parks down here are like that.” By the way Wes said it, he didn't much fancy it. Well, he was a Yankee. To me, that kind of thing was water to a fish. I honest to Pete thought the coloreds felt the same. I hadn't seen so much then as I have now.

But I wasn't thinking about that then. I pointed again, this time toward a seat right behind the Metros' dugout. “You're right. All the parks down here are like that. So what's
he
doin' there?”

He was high yaller. I might not have noticed him but for his kinky hair—he wore it longer and fuller than most colored men. Or I might have. His suit was the color of a lime that just got hit by lightning. He had on a pumpkin shirt and a blood-red tie with something on it—from that far out, I couldn't tell what. No white man would ever have put on an outfit like that.

All Wes saw was the clothes. “He's a piece of work, all right. Some places I know, the cops'd toss you in a cell for what he's got on. An offense against morals, they'd call it, and they'd be right.”

“They might put him in a cell, but could they keep him there?” I said. “If he's not a conjure man, what is he?”

Wes sat up and took notice then, so much so that a fly ball almost skulled him. “Wake up, sweetie!” yelled a fat fan in the bleachers. I would've told him to go stick an apple in his mouth if he called me sweetie. Wes just trotted in. The next fungo came my way. So did the one after that.

When I could pay attention again, Wes was chinning with Harv. Things are tough enough on the road when the game is pretty much honest. Honest or not, the umps won't give you a break. The home team knows the field and the fence angles better than you do.