The House of Daniel Read online

  Conoco Ball Park in Ponca City, they fenced off a fair stretch of prairie and called it a field. In Big Spring, it looked more like the idea was to put a fence around an outhouse. I guess that was the lot they had to build their ballyard on, and they did what they could with it, but oh, my!

  Left was 306, short but not crazy short. Only 380 to dead center, though, and 265 down the right-field line. Right-field fence was twenty-five, thirty feet high, and made out of pressed tin, to try to keep some of those balls from sailing out. Every ball that hit it left a dent. That wall was dented plenty.

  The home nine was the Cowboys. Big Spring was another one of the nine million places that got into pro ball when times were flush and got flushed out after the Big Bubble went ker-pop. Some of their old guys stuck around because they still liked to play and they still liked picking up extra cash. The younger ones had those reasons and the hope somebody who knew somebody would notice ’em, like what he saw, and give ’em a chance at the brass ring.

  Their pitcher was one of those kids. He was a southpaw, and he threw BBs. He didn’t aim real well, though. He put me in mind of Don Patterson back in Enid. I hadn’t hardly been homesick since I joined up with the House of Daniel—I hadn’t had time to be, tell you the truth—but I was then.

  He got a couple of outs in the first and walked a couple of guys. Harv came up, swung late on one of those fastballs, and lofted a high, lazy fly to right.

  Cowboys’ right fielder went back, back, and then the wall stopped him. Clank! It picked up a new dent. Harv got a double, but we only scored one. They would’ve thrown out our other runner by twenty feet if he’d tried to come all the way around. Didn’t matter, though. Eddie drove in both ducks on the pond with a single up the middle.

  And Fidgety Frank gave back two of ’em in the bottom of the first. One was a homer to dead center. I jumped—the fence in center was low enough to give me a chance—but it was long gone. The Cowboys rattled the tin once themselves, too.

  We were all shaking our heads when we came back to the dugout. “Last man standing,” Wes said, and that was about the size of it.

  We beat ’em, 15-11. Not pretty—nowhere close—but we made it work. It would’ve been 15-12, only I purely stole a home run from one of their fellas. Another one where I jumped with my back against the 380 sign. My glove must’ve been a foot over the top of the fence when I hauled the ball back in. I think the catch I made in Ponca City was better, but even the Cowboys’ fans clapped some for this one.

  All I wanted to do when we got off the field was go on over to our roominghouse and clean up. And all I wanted to do was grab something to eat, on account of my belly was grumbling like some of that faraway thunder. And all I wanted was to go to sleep. Two bus rides and two games—that’s a long, long day.

  And I couldn’t do any of the things I wanted to, at least not right away. A reporter for the Big Spring Daily Herald wanted to talk about the home run I took away. “What can I tell you?” I said. “I jumped as high as I could, and the ball stayed in my glove till I could get my other hand on it.”

  “That wasn’t a semipro play,” he said. “That was a play they’d be glad to see in a big-league park.”

  “Thanks. Obliged.” I left it there. You see plenty of great plays in semipro ball. Trouble with guys who play my kind of baseball is, they’ve got a hole in their game somewhere. They don’t hit enough—like me. Or they’re terrible slow. Or they’ll make some great plays but foul up too many everyday ones. Or if they’re pitchers they’re wild, like the Cowboys’ twirler or Don back in Enid.

  Higher up the ladder you go, the more everyday plays get made and the simpler the game looks. Just in my handful of games, I’d seen that the House of Daniel stood on a higher rung than my old Eagles. Not a way higher rung—the Eagles stood a chance against ’em, same as the Greasemen had. But you’d have to be a fool, and a fool from Enid at that, to bet against the House of Daniel in the matchup.

  “You made the play of the game, no question about it.” The reporter showed me his scoresheet. He’d put two stars by my catch, so he liked it, all right. He’d even spelled my last name right, which doesn’t happen all the time.

  I never saw the story. We were on the road the next morning, and nobody bought a paper. If I’d known how much trouble it would make me, I would’ve told him my handle was really Eddie Lelivelt.

  * * *

  We set out for Midland and Odessa from Big Spring. We played in Odessa, even though Midland’s the one that used to have a pro team. They both reminded me of Pampa. Neither one of ’em was real big, but they had oil wells. Only from Odessa you could see mountains against the western skyline, blurry and purple in the distance.

  There’s gold in them there hills. They say there is, and I guess they’re right, since a miner got rich in them. But he never told anybody where or how, and the secret died with him years ago. People still go out and look for his strike every now and again. Nobody’s ever found it, though.

  Anyway, we didn’t have to worry about being late for this game, not unless the bus broke down, and it didn’t. We played on a field in the city park. That made Harv unhappy: the stands didn’t hold enough to suit him. “Next time we come through here, we’ll go to Midland instead,” he said, and he wrote it down in his notebook to make sure he didn’t forget.

  Watching him tend to that reminded me of something that was on my mind anyhow. “Are we just playing our way through Texas, or what?” I asked Eddie.

  “Huh? You don’t know?”

  “If I did, would I be asking?”

  He kind of laughed. “I guess there’s no reason you ought to. I forgot how you joined the team. We’re playing through West Texas, yeah, and then into New Mexico, and then on up into Colorado. The Denver Post semipro tournament starts the twelfth of June, and we’re gonna be there.”

  “The Post tournament!” I knew about it. The Eagles had talked about it back in Enid. Talk was as far as we ever got. Not a chance in church we could’ve scraped together the money to get there. If we won the tournament, that would’ve paid for the trip and then some, but what were the odds? Bad, worse, and downright ridiculous, that’s what.

  Post tournament’s open to any team not in the bigs or regular minors. You can’t use ringers who played in pro ball this year or last. But there are plenty of good ballplayers outside that tent. I was in a bus full of ’em. And … “They let colored teams play in that one, don’t they?”

  “I’m not sure they have before, but they’re going to this year—I know that.” Eddie cocked his head to one side and eyed me like some funny new kind of bug. “We’ve played those teams before. Why? Does the idea bother you?”

  “Not so you’d notice. I think it’d be interesting to see what they can do.” I tried to give him back his own stare. “How come you reckon it would? On account of Ah tahk lahk thiyyus?”

  I stretched out the last few words, and turned the very last one into two syllables. That was more Texas, and hick Texas at that, than Oklahoma. We drawl some—plenty for a Yankee to notice, but less than our Lone Star neighbors. They get more up in arms about colored folks—and greasers—than we do, too. Well, they have more of both to get up in arms about.

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’ll shut up. Some of the stuff I think about where you come from is probably just as dumb as some of the stuff you think about my neck of the woods.”

  Everybody creaked and groaned when we went out there against the Odessa Coyotes. Harv called ’em Kye-oh-tees. In Odessa, they were Kye-oats. Whatever you called ’em, we should’ve licked ’em easy. Just watching ’em take infield and shag flies, you could see they weren’t as good as either the Swatters or the Cowboys.

  We weren’t so hot in Odessa ourselves that afternoon, even if the weather was. We’d played solid ball in Sweetwater and Big Spring the day before. I’d though it would catch up with us in Big Spring, but it didn’t. We’d played two solid games … and it came back to haunt us in that sun
-blasted ballpark in Odessa.

  Wes did the twirling for us. He wasn’t what you’d call rested, but he was fresher than Fidgety Frank. He could get by on junk and smarts. He could, yeah, only not that day. And we made four errors behind him, which’ll kill anybody deader’n belt leather. We kicked it around so much, you would’ve thought we were playing football out there.

  “Shucks!” Harv said. He said it again a couple of innings later, too, only louder. It was one of the few times I saw him where he looked as though he wanted to tear loose and cuss for real. And when the last out came and we were on the short end of a 7-2 thrashing, he said, “Doggone it!” Strong words, from Harv.

  The Coyotes didn’t go over the moon at beating us the way the Ravens had, but you could tell they were happy about it. “We must’ve been lucky,” their manager said to Harv. “I’ve seen you guys before. You’re sharper than that most of the time.”

  “You like to be sharp all the time,” Harv answered. Then he said “Doggone it!” one more time. Then he yawned.

  “Been on the road some?” the Odessa manager asked. Yeah, he was a gent. He was doing his best to let us down easy.

  “Some,” Harv allowed. He quickly added, “But we’re on the road all the time, too.” Harv was never one to make excuses. As far as he was concerned, there was no excuse for losing anyhow. He went on, “You got some good ballplayers here. That’s how come you beat us.”

  “Obliged to you for saying so.” The Odessa man touched the brim of his cap. He was an older fella, with gray hair sticking out from under the cap. He hadn’t been in the game. Looking at his soaking uniform, though, you would’ve guessed he’d gone about sixteen innings behind the plate. He gestured back toward his dugout. “Let’s play like a couple of thieves and divide the loot.”

  “Okey-doke.” Harv went over there with him. He looked unhappy a different way when he came back. First thing he did then was take me aside. “Snake, I know I said you’d get ten a game till you went on shares, but nobody’s share today comes that high. I’m gonna give you five for the game. I’m sorry, but there you are.”

  He waited to see what I’d say. Did he reckon I’d pitch a fit? Not likely! I had more money in my grouch bag than in I don’t remember when, I was playing more ball than I ever had before, and I’d got clean away from Big Stu (well, I thought so, any road). Yeah, I could’ve gone You so-and-so, you promised! and either got the money or jumped the team. But I’m not that kind of natural-born damn fool. Other kinds, sure, but not that one.

  All I did say was, “Seems fair. If I stick with the House of Daniel, I know I’ll make it up.”

  He punched me on the arm, not too hard. “You’re all right, Snake.”

  We got back on the bus and drove to the boarding house where we’d clean up and spend the night. It was getting on toward suppertime. We went past a couple of soup kitchens, one in some sort of county office, the other—with a longer line outside—at a church.

  I only got five dollars that day? The scrawny men and the worried women and the hungry kids in those soup-kitchen lines, they didn’t have anything. They hadn’t had anything for quite a while. Chances they’d get anything any time soon didn’t look real great, either. They had to know it, too. No wonder the women in those faded dresses, washed too many times and patched and darned, looked worried.

  If I had thrown a fit about the money, seeing those lined faces and sorry clothes would have shamed me. I hope like anything it would, anyway. I felt a little ashamed even as things were. Here I was, making money playing a boys’ game, and those folks couldn’t find work to save their souls. The world’s a cruel place sometimes.

  Tomorrow we’d be gone. Harv knew where, and I’d find out. They’d still be right here. So would their troubles. Tomorrow, we’d see somebody else’s troubles. Not everybody could stand life on the road. The more of it I saw, the less sure I was that I could.

  Odessa bragged about having night clubs. It didn’t brag about all the folks who couldn’t afford to set foot inside one even if they wanted to, but never mind. The House of Daniel guys didn’t go out to cut a rug. After we cleaned up and put on regular clothes, we walked across the street to a joint where we could get a big bowl of chili—spicy enough to barbecue your tonsils—and a Shiner Bock or a Coca-Cola for thirty-five cents. Then we came back, went up to our rooms, and did our best to sleep in the heat. Each room had a little fan that pushed the air around some, but they sure didn’t cool it much.

  So much for night life in Odessa, Texas.

  * * *

  No, I take that back. We did have some night life … one more time, no. That’s not right, either. Let me tell it instead of trying to explain it ahead of time. That way I won’t get it all twisted up. And if the Odessa Rotary Club doesn’t like what I have to say, too bad. It’s as true as everything else in here.

  Some time in the middle of the night, something started tapping on the window glass. You hear noises like that if you’ve got a lighted window and moths fly into the glass. But it was black as black in there, and what tapped on the glass, that was no moth.

  I was asleep. Then I was a little bit awake. Then I was awake awake, if you know what I mean. Awake clean through. How else are you gonna be if you look toward the window—a second-story window, mind—and you see somebody pressed against it beckoning to you to open up and let him in?

  “Eddie?” I whispered, none too steady.

  “I see it, too, Jack,” he whispered back. Nothing fazed Eddie. He’d made one of the errors that afternoon, and a bad one, but I knew he’d be fine tomorrow. A vampire at the window wouldn’t rattle him.

  “Let me come in,” the vampire said. Like the one I’d bumped into in Ponca City, it talked like anybody else. Had a West Texas drawl thick enough to slice, in fact. “Let me come in, and I’ll make you free like me.”

  “Tell me another one,” I couldn’t help answering the undead thing. The conjure man’s tout tried to sell me freedom, too. It’s as American as apple pie—if you’re dumb enough to buy it. Or if times are hard enough for you.

  The vampire should have sold Pierce-Arrows or something. Maybe it had, back before it got bit. “I mean it,” it said. “Freedom from want, freedom from sorrow … All you need is a neck, and you’re as rich as a Rockefeller. In the brotherhood of blood, you’re as good as everyone else. You won’t have to scramble for steaks any more.”

  “No—you have to scramble away from stakes,” I said, and mimed pounding one into the vampire’s heart. It flinched back from the window glass. The room might’ve been pitch-dark, but it could see in there fine.

  A neck, and you’re as rich as a Rockefeller. The brotherhood of blood. Ever since the Russians went and slaughtered their Czar, people who aren’t in Russia have wondered if vampires are running things over there. The Russians sure talk like that a lot of the time. And is it an accident their new flag is red?

  “Let me in,” this one said. “You won’t need to worry about the fancy new convertible, either. You’ll fly like me.” I wasn’t so sure about flying. It could hang outside the window without visible means of support, though. I had to give it that.

  Eddie Lelivelt laughed at it. “Fat lot of good a convertible’d do you now, huh? First touch of sun and what are you? Dust in the wind.”

  That made the vampire flinch again. But it didn’t quit. It must’ve been hungry itself. “Don’t you want to live for yourselves, by yourselves, with no one to tell you what to do any more?”

  What I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I pulled the cross out from below the undershirt I was wearing. It flared, the same color as the lightning a couple of nights earlier. In the dark room, it seemed about as bright as a lightning bolt, too.

  “Go away!” I said. “You aren’t invited in!”

  When my eyes got used to the dark again, the vampire was gone. I stuck the cross back where it belonged and rolled over in bed. Five minutes later, I was sleeping some more. Eddie beat me to it, though. I heard him snoring be
fore I dropped off myself.

  * * *

  West again on US 80 the next morning. The farther we went, the paler and the more sun-scorched the country got. Cactus. Sagebrush. Gray dirt. White sand. I’ve seen some sad and sorry prairie. This here wasn’t prairie. This here was desert. I hoped we had a couple of extra jugs of water in case the radiator overheated—or in case we did.

  The little town of Barstow was like an oasis in that desert. They raised all kinds of crops around there, on account of they got the water they needed from the Red Bluff dam not far away.

  Four or five miles farther on, we crossed over the river on an iron bridge that hadn’t been painted in too long. Big streaks of rust ran down it. It was still strong enough to take our weight, yeah. How long would it stay that way, though, if nobody cared for it?

  As soon as we got to the far side, Wes let out a whoop: “West of the Pecos! No law here!”

  Some of us laughed. Some groaned. From behind the wheel, Harv said, “Let’s go out there and steal us a herd of buses, then.” He got himself some laughs and some groans, too.

  Town of Pecos is right on the west side of the river. Like Midland and Odessa, it’s a cow town and an oil town. It’s about the same size as each of them, too. I don’t think Pecos ever had a team in a pro league. Didn’t mean they didn’t have three or four clubs that played on weekends and split the gate. We were playing the Pecos Peccaries—a peccary is a little wild hog.

  “Not the Pecos Bills?” I said.

  “There is a team with that handle,” Harv said. “The Peccaries are better—and they promised us a bigger share of the money.”

  So much for my try at a joke. We went out there to swing the bat and chase flies. The infielders would practice on grounders, and then they’d go through their phantom infield drill to give the crowd something to ooh and ahh about. You need to liven them up any way you can.