W. Kinsella - The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

Drifting Away was there when Crazy Horse died, murdered by a soldier named Gentles, held from behind by his traitorous brother, Little Big Man. With a knife blue as moonlight Drifting Away cut out the noble heart, carried it to Crazy Horse’s elderly parents, who buried it in the clear, sweet water of Wounded Knee Creek .

‘I think I’ll turn in,’ I said to the Barons, early on the evening after the funeral. I was just not able to face any more conversation, no matter how loving or concerned.

But in my room, between the crisp linen sheets, I could not sleep. I got up and dressed, then tiptoed down the hall and stairs like a burglar, carrying my shoes in front of me.

The sky was clear, the stars like tinsel, the soil still warm from the sun of the afternoon. I walked down the silent midnight roads, past the small Onamata Catholic Church, its spire the middle of a trinity of shadows; evergreens on either side of the church had grown to almost equal height. Along the roads, the corn stood crisp and blond, chittering like small rodents in a whisper of a breeze.

Onamata was quiet; the streetlights hummed. Above a hedge an occasional firefly twinkled; something scuttled in an overgrown yard. I let myself into the empty house. I went to my room and retrieved my horn from where it lay encased in fuschia-colored velvet in its old black case. The moon trickled over the horn, sparking until I might have been carrying golden water in my hand. I headed for the gentle elevation on the edge of town, where the land rises steadily up from the sleepy Iowa River. The river that night was so silent it might have been painted on the landscape. I climbed the easy slope I now knew had been the Big Inning baseball grounds. I knew that something terrible, something of history-changing magnitude, had taken place there. I walked on past the furthest reaches of center field, stopping on a precipice that must, long ago, have been a buffalo jump. I stood staring out at the rolling acres of corn, the pinprick of yard lights in a farmstead or two. Behind me was the eerie glow of Onamata, like a campfire just over a ridge.

I pointed my horn toward the sky and let it cry for me, let it translate my sorrow into notes. I played such a version of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game,’ the music plaintive as a loon’s call, the melody melancholy as taps. When I finished I rested for a few seconds, then went at it again, moving the tempo up to nearly normal but still soulful. Finally, knowing my father would not want me to grieve for long, I blasted it out with a Dixieland wail, as if I were playing during the seventh-inning stretch in front of a hundred thousand frenzied fans in a pennant-deciding game.

Once in the days after I moved back into my own home, before I met Sunny, I brought Missy Baron home with me to the cool, high-ceilinged kitchen with its tall cupboards and the rectangular, flat-bottomed sink. The sink boasted high steel faucets capped with porcelain. I made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, a bachelor’s specialty. Mainly I wanted to see if Missy would be a party to any of the unusual goings-on in my kitchen. I think, too, I simply wanted some confirmation of what I had seen, something to let me know my obsession with the Confederacy was not tampering with my sanity.

We finished our meal, Missy being elaborately careful to spoon up the last few drops of her soup and to blot up the last crumbs of her sandwich with her middle finger.

‘You do a very good job of cleaning up your plate,’ I said. Missy smiled like sunshine.

‘Can’t let good food go to waste,’ she said, and I could hear Marylyle Baron’s tones echoing in Missy’s slightly nasal sing-song.

‘No, we can’t,’ I said. Then, ‘Let’s go sit in the sun porch.’

As we stood to leave the room, the water began gushing into the sink, the dish detergent gulped out of the bottle, and a froth of suds rose to the edge of the sink. The dishes, as if carried by invisible servants, floated to the sink and immersed themselves gently like children sliding into a bubble bath.

When the washing and rinsing were done, the plates, cups, and cutlery glided off like butterflies, each to its proper place on the shelves, and the cupboard doors and cutlery drawer closed softly.

Missy stood entranced the whole time. I was vindicated. What I saw was actually happening. When our eyes met, I was smiling from ear to ear, nearly bursting with excitement. I had never shared the mystery of it before. My father was always talking of the magic in the air, but I never knew how much of it he experienced. Until now, the dishes had performed their sleight of hand only when I was alone with them.

‘They rinsed themselves only once,’ Missy said, with deadly seriousness. ‘Mama says you rinse once to get the soap off and once to kill germs.’

If the eeries in my kitchen heard, they were not about to let on, though I imagined I heard a cupboard door tugged lightly shut, from the inside.

After the funeral, Missy did bake cookies, and I helped her. Sometimes I teased her gently by taking a fork and making a cross pattern on one of the cookies, or marking one well off center. Missy would pull her lips tight in exasperation; she became the mother, I the child. ‘Oh, Gideon, that’s not the way to do it,’ she would say, scowling. Then she would deliberately take the improperly marked gingerbread back, roll the fork marks out of it, and with extreme care redo it properly.

It was a good distraction for me, taking my mind off the death of my father and the multitudinous fund of information concerning the Iowa Baseball Confederacy that whirled and flopped in my head like clothing tumbling in a dryer.

Later, from the hallway, I listened to Missy splashing her bath water, giggling like a five-year-old. ‘Gideon, come see me sail my boat,’ she called between splashes.

And then from behind the door came Marylyle’s firm voice saying, ‘You’re too grown up for Gideon to see you in the bathtub.’