Michael Bishop: Brittle Innings

During this workout, I muffed a cozy roller at short, then overthrew Jessie Muldrow at first trying to outgun the runner. Bad. Baaad. At the plate, I swung too hard, topping the ball once and popping it up on my second at bat. Rotten. Not even the Phillies would’ve wanted me. Time I got a third chance to hit, Mister JayMac’d vamoosed. I got on base, but with a cheap swinging bunt I legged out from sheer embarrassment. But so what? Mama’d better check with Colonel Elshtain to see if Deck Glider had an assembly-line job for me.

Tuesday afternoon, in a game against Checotah, I forgot the crowd, the bench jockeys in the other dugout, the dogs barking on Cookson Road, everything but the rope-sized seams on every ball floating my way. Don’t know why, but the ball looked big as the moon to me. Hitting or fielding, I couldn’t miss it. For all the effect he had on me, Mister JayMac-up in our stands-could’ve been in the Belgian Congo. I played great. Afterwards, the boys from Checotah got on their bus as low and hollowed-out as dogwood stumps.

Mister JayMac didn’t speak to me after this game, either. Once we’d put it away, I did start thinking about him again, my ticket out of Tenkiller. When he still didn’t show up, though, I thought, Nuts to you, mister.

Shortly after supper that evening, Mister JayMac showed up at our stucco house on Cody Street. Five-and-a-half rooms, just big enough for a couch, a pair of beds, a beat-up table, a w.c., and a cheap cathedral radio. It always seemed to smell of hash and eggs.

Mister JayMac didn’t reach six feet, but in a buttermilk coat with awning-sized lapels and pockets, he filled our house the way a film actor can sometimes glut a whole movie screen. Mama got a chair from the kitchen and made him sit. Didn’t want him looming. Then, like two kids in a dentist’s waiting room, she and I huddled together on the sofa.

“Ma’am,” Mister JayMac said, “I’d like your son to come with me to Highbridge tomorrow.” He didn’t bother to look at me. He aimed all his magnolia gallantry at Mama. “My club, the Hellbenders, has need of him.”

“So do the Red Stix. Plus, Danny’s got school to finish.”

“Yessum,” Mister JayMac said.

“He’s been going twelve years, nearly,” Mama said. “Why fall shy of a sheepskin by a piddlin two months?”

“Why, indeed? An enlightened attitude,” Mister JayMac said.

“He needs his education.”

“ ‘What sculpture is to a block of marble,’ ” Mister JayMac told Mama, “ ‘education is to the soul.’ Addison.”

“Well, Addison spoke true.”

“Yes he did,” Mister JayMac said. “But there’s education and there’s education. If Danny doesn’t return to Highbridge with me tomorrow, he’ll miss the chance to train with us and the opening month of our season.” He pulled a string-tied packet from inside his coat. “Here’s a contract, Mrs Boles.” He untied the packet and handed an official-looking form with a clip-on to Mama. “Also a check for seventy-five dollars, his first full month’s pay.” He could’ve dropped a garter snake down my shirt-that kind of thrill went through me. “But, Mrs Boles, you must countersign my enabling form and let Danny go back with me.” He reached over and tapped the check.

I was a slave who wanted to be sold. School was lectures and yawns, girls smirking and wiseacres pulling stupid jokes.

Mama stared down at my clipped-on check. “Coach Brandon says some nigger ballplayers make twice this, maybe.”

“That’s probably true,” Mister JayMac said. “I daresay those players draw better than Danny’s likely to jes yet.”

“Well, he can’t go now anyway,” Mama said. “Even when he can, seventy-five won’t do. That’s coffee-and-cake pay. Danny may jes be starting, but no colored boy ought to make more than him.”

My mama, the John L. Lewis of ball agents. All she needed was Lewis’s eyebrows. Mister JayMac ripped up his check, and I almost swallowed my tongue. Smithereened. My whole career.

“Mrs Boles, you drive a hard bargain.” Mister JayMac took the contract back. “I’ll up his pay twenty-five and send yall a new contract. Forget this one. Mr Boles,” finally looking at me, “we’ll send you a train ticket. Ride down soon’s you’ve got your diploma, hear?”

I tried to answer. “Yessir,” I wanted to say, but it might as well’ve been the Lord’s Prayer in Gullah.

As promised, the revised contract came two weeks later. Mama and I signed it for a notary, with Coach Brandon and the Elshtains as witnesses. Two, three days later, Mr Ogrodnik announced my good fortune to the student body in the gym. Kids cheered, pretty girls and class-officer types among them. If I’d had the guts, I’d’ve dynamited half the hypocrites there, even though I did like hearing them cheer.

Franklin Gooch said I was a lucky bastard. When we’d won the war, guys like DiMaggio, Williams, and Greenberg would come home and their stay-at-home subs would disappear completely. A real talent, though, would survive.

“You,” Goochie said, “are a real talent.”

Goochie was already eighteen. Early in ’42, his mama’s younger brother had been killed on the cruiser Houston in the Battle of the Java Sea. Goochie wanted to take a few Jap scalps in the Marines, but he didn’t begrudge me my shot at a career in pro ball. Envied me, but didn’t call me a feather merchant. He had other kettles of fish to fry. Too bad his goals led him into the hands of a graves-registration crew on Okinawa.

Tenkiller was a side-track burg. So I caught the train in Tahlequah. Mister JayMac had sent me a ticket.

Colonel Elshtain had a C gas-rationing sticker on the divided window of his automobile, supposedly because his job at Deck Glider had such import to the national defense. Actually, I think, he had buddies in the War Department, who knew folks in the Office of Price Administration. Anyway, that C sticker got Colonel Elshtain all the gas he wanted, and he and Miss Tulipa drove Mama and me to the station in Tahlequah in his 1939 Hudson Terraplane. (That car was a picture of chrome and ivory. It even had a radio.) My only luggage was a duffel full of clothes. The handle of my favorite baseball bat-Coach Brandon had given it to me-stuck out of my bag, and my bag rode in the Hudson ’s trunk. In the back, next to Mama, I felt partly like a rich swell and partly like a murderer riding in style to the gallows.

On the station platform, Mama looked angry enough to spit. In truth, she’d just clamped her lips to keep from crying. I was grateful she was managing so well. No seventeen-year-old kid wants his mama blubbering all over him in public. And that railway depot was crowded. Tahlequah looked like Tulsa.

Recruits in civvies heading for Camp Gruber or Fort Sill. GIs going back to Chaffee, Benning, Polk, or Penticuff after furloughs. Cardboard suitcases and duffels. Parents and girls mingling with the sad-sack soldiers and recruits. All the guys were riding passenger trains, not troop-train expresses, with civilians like me in a near-invisible minority.

Some of the GIs wove back and forth through the redbrick station building. In buddy-buddy groups. Sometimes they’d stop near Mama and me to look me up and down. I was only to scoff at-soldier material like marshmallows are ammo. I could hardly believe I’d have to share a car with these rude and crude dogfaces. The ones with stripes on their sleeves scared the Cherokee piss out of me.

“You puny cur,” Mama said, “don’t forget to write.”

I only stood five-five, but Audie Murphy, who came along later, wound up the war’s most decorated soldier, and he was no bruiser either. Me, I was in tiptop trim. If I could play ball in the Chattahoochee heat, why’d so many of these wiseguy doughboys seem to think I couldn’t charge into Jap artillery fire? Why’d Mama assume I’d steam into vapor under the Georgia sun and never even send her a postcard?