The House of Daniel Read online

  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 soun
ded 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.

  If they put a hex on you, too … Amarillo’s a tough town some ways. You heard stories about the Greys, the team that was on top there before the Metros got good. They brawled all the time, sometimes so bad they couldn’t finish games. When they did finish ’em, they had their own kind of fun afterwards. They’d bury live chickens in the dirt up to their necks, all in a row. Then they’d gallop by on horseback, one player at a time, and lean down and yank off the chickens’ heads. Whoever tore off the most won.

  So a little magic to help the home team along wouldn’t have surprised me one bit. If you had some serious side money down on the game, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to make sure you didn’t blow it? Sure you would.

  Anybody would think I used to do business for Big Stu or something. Yeah, anybody would.

  I watched the Metros getting loose after we came in. They might not have needed a conjure man. They were slick as boiled okra. Their pitcher was a big southpaw who’d been around the block a time or three. He wouldn’t beat himself. That’s half the battle right there.

  Oh, and I got a look at what was painted on the high yaller guy’s necktie. It was a skull—a skull in a yellow fedora. Wes had it right. That fellow was a piece of work. Dirty work. Dirty work he’d pull on us.

  Nobody sat anywhere near him. It wasn’t because the crowd there was white and he was colored, either. Oh, no. Whatever color he was, that was the least of people’s worries.

  We went down in order in the top of the first. The stuff the Metros’ pitcher was throwing, either it fell off the table or it came in hot enough to broil steaks on. Back behind their dugout, that conjure man was wiggling and twisting like he had a swarm of fire ants inside that stupid silk suit. He might have been sweating harder than the guy on the hill. Of course, if you can’t sweat in Amarillo, you aren’t half trying.

  They touched us for a run in their half of the frame. Two singles and a long fly to left—nothing much to do about it. We got a scratch hit in the top of the second, but that was all.

  We watched the Metros’ pitcher. We watched the conjure man. “I bet he’s a fake,” Wes said. “They’re playing games with our heads, like—gave that clown five bucks and told him to play at being a wizard.”

  “I dunno,” Eddie said. “I don’t remember their guy being anywhere near this sharp last time we were here.”

  “Me, neither,” Harv allowed. “But have no fear, friends. The Lord provided for Daniel. If He’s so inclined, He’ll provide for Daniel’s House, too.”

  “If,” Eddie said.

  “Have no fear,” Harv repeated. “Just go out there and play good ball. You take care of your end and the Lord’ll take care of His.”

  But Eddie booted one to start off the bottom of the second. He looked down at his glove as if it were playing tricks on him. Me, I thought the ball took a crazy hop right when it got to him. The infield was baby-butt smooth—it shouldn’t have bounced like that. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

  Metros didn’t score, though. I ran down a drive in left-cent
er to make sure they didn’t. It was a good catch, yeah, but not a crazy one like the one I made in Ponca City. A guy doesn’t make this play, he’s got no business out there. Way the conjure man clapped his hands to his chest and screeched, I might’ve swiped his life’s savings, if he had any.

  I led off the top of the third. First pitch was high heat, straight at my coconut. I sprawled every which way. Wes hadn’t buzzed me anywhere near that hard. I got up, picked up my bat, put my cap back on, dusted off my behind, and stood in again. If my head was thumping, their pitcher didn’t have to know.

  “Didn’t mean to throw a beanball,” he said. He sounded as though he meant it. But I bet the conjure man meant him to.

  I wanted to hit the next one nine miles. That’d learn both of ’em! I swung hard, and missed. Then I grounded to third. Yeah, what you want and what you get are different. If nothing else shows you that, baseball sure will.

  When I got back to the dugout, I was muttering to myself. “Hang in there, Jack,” Eddie said. Eddie’s all right.

  Harv was muttering to himself in there, too. Not the way I was. He was muttering things like, “‘And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his kingdom.’”

  Good Book talk. You heard it all the time in Enid. I used little bits and pieces myself sometimes. Harv talked as if he grew up going on like that. Well, he did. And it wasn’t just Good Book talk, I found out later. It was Book of Daniel talk. He was pickled in it like a cuke in vinegar.

  I looked across the field at the conjure man back of the Metros’ dugout. He was wiggling and twitching some more. Different now, though. When I wiggled like that, it was because I swallowed a big old dose of castor oil. And wouldn’t you know it? Right about then, he lit out for the gents’, and he wasn’t what you’d call slow about it, either.

  “Harv?” I said.