Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“I have some idea,” Danny said.

“And?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “Believe me.”

On the tenth of January, in a light snow, Thomas Coughlin left his station house. The new recruits were coming along faster than expected. They were mostly smart. And eager. The State Guard still patrolled the streets, but the units had begun to demobilize. Within the month, they’d be gone, and the restored Boston Police Department would rise in their place.

Thomas walked up the street toward home. At the corner, under a streetlamp, his son leaned against the pole.

“Believe the Sox traded Ruth?” Danny said.

Thomas shrugged. “I was never a fan of the game.”

“To New York,” Danny said.

“Your youngest brother is, of course, distraught over it. I haven’t seen him this beside himself since …”

His father didn’t have to finish the thought. It pierced Danny just the same.

“How’s Con’?”

His father tipped his hand from side to side. “He has good days and bad. He’s learning to read by his fingers. There’s a school in Back Bay that teaches it. If the bitterness doesn’t overwhelm him, he could be all right.”

“Does it overwhelm you?”

“Nothing overwhelms me, Aiden.” His father’s breath was white in the cold. “I’m a man.”

Danny said nothing.

His father said, “Well, then, you look back to trim. So I guess I’ll be going.”

“We’re leaving the city, Dad.”

“You’re …?”

Danny nodded. “Leaving the state actually. Heading west.”

His father looked stunned. “This is your home.”

Danny shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Maybe his father had thought that Danny would reside in exile but close by. That way Thomas Coughlin could live with the illusion that his family was still intact. But once Danny left, a hole would open that not even Thomas could have prepared for.

“You’re all packed then, I take it.”

“Yeah. We’re going to head to New York for a few days before Volstead kicks in. We never had a proper honeymoon.”

His father nodded. He kept his head lowered, the snow falling in his hair.

“Good-bye, Dad.”

Danny started to walk past him and his father grabbed his arm. “Write me.”

“Will you write back?”

“No. But I’d like to know—”

“Then I won’t write.”

His father’s face stiffened and he gave him a curt nod and dropped his arm.

Danny walked up the street, the snow thickening, the footprints his father had left already obscured.

“Aiden!”

He turned, could barely see the man in all the white swirling between them. The flakes caked his eyelashes and he blinked them away.

“I’ll write back,” his father called.

A sudden boom of wind rattled the cars along the street.

“All right, then,” Danny called.

“Take care of yourself, son.”

“You, too.”

His father raised a hand and Danny raised one in return and then they turned and walked in separate directions through the snow.

On the train to New York, everyone was drunk. Even the porters. Twelve in the afternoon and people were guzzling champagne and guzzling rye and a band played in the fourth car, and the band was drunk. No one sat in their seats. Everyone hugged and kissed and danced. Prohibition was now the law of the land. Enforcement would begin four days from now, on the sixteenth.

Babe Ruth had a private car on the train, and at first he tried to sit out the revelry. He read over a copy of the contract he’d officially sign at day’s end in the offices of the Colonels at the Polo Grounds. He was now a Yankee. The trade had been announced ten days ago, though Ruth had never seen it coming. Got drunk for two days to deal with the depression. Johnny Igoe found him, though, and sobered him up. Explained that Babe was now the highest-paid player in baseball history. He showed him New York paper after New York paper, all proclaiming their joy, their ecstasy about getting the most feared slugger in the game on their team.

“You already own the town, Babe, and you haven’t even arrived yet.”

That put a new perspective on things. Babe had feared that New York was too big, too loud, too wide. He’d get swallowed up in it. Now he realized the opposite was true — he was too big for Boston. Too loud. Too wide. It couldn’t hold him. It was too small, too provincial. New York was the only stage large enough for the Babe. New York and New York alone. It wasn’t going to swallow Babe. He was going to swallow it .

I am Babe Ruth. I am bigger and better and stronger and more popular than anyone. Anyone.

Some drunk woman bounced off his door and he heard her giggle, the sound alone giving him an erection.

What the hell was he doing back here alone when he could be out there with his public, jawing, signing autographs, giving them a story they’d tell their grandkids?

He left the room. He walked straight to the bar car, worked his way through the dancing drunks, one bird up on a table kicking her legs like she was working burlesque. He sidled up the bar, ordered a double scotch.

“Why’d you leave us, Babe?”

He turned, looked at the drunk beside him, a short guy with a tall girlfriend, both of them three sheets to the wind.

“I didn’t leave, ” Babe said. “Harry Frazee traded me. I had no say. I’m just a working stiff.”

“Then you’ll come back someday?” the guy said. “Play out your contract and come back to us?”

“Sure,” Babe lied. “That’s the idea, bub.”

The man patted him on the back. “Thanks, Mr. Ruth.”

“Thank you,” Ruth said with a wink for his girlfriend. He downed his drink and ordered another.

He ended up striking up a conversation with this big guy and his Irish wife. It turned out the big guy had been one of the striking coppers and was heading to New York for a little honeymoon before moving on out west to see a friend.

“What were you guys thinking?” Ruth asked him.

“Just trying to get a fair shake,” the ex-copper said.

“But it don’t work that way,” Babe said, eyeing that wife of his, a real dish, her accent sexy as all hell, too. “Look at me. I’m the biggest baseball player in the world and I got no say where they trade me. I got no power. Thems that write the checks write the rules.”

The ex-copper smiled. It was a rueful smile and distant. “Different sets of rules for different classes of people, Mr. Ruth.”

“Oh, sure. When wasn’t that so?”

They had a few more drinks and Ruth had to say he’d never seen a couple so in love. They barely touched, and it wasn’t like they got all gooey on each other, talked to each other in baby voices and called each other “dumpling” or anything. Even so, it was like a rope hung between them, invisible but electric, and that rope connected them more strongly than shared limbs. The rope was not only electric, it was serene. It glowed warm and peaceful. Honest.

Ruth grew sad. He’d never felt that kind of love, not even in his earliest days with Helen. He’d never felt that with another human being. Ever.

Peace. Honesty. Home.

God, was it even possible?

Apparently it was, because these two had it. At one point, the dame tapped a single finger on the ex-copper’s hand. Just one light tap. And he looked at her and she smiled, her upper teeth exposed as they ran over her lower lip. God, it broke Babe’s heart, that look. Had anyone ever looked at him like that?

No.

Would anyone?

No.

His spirits brightened only later as he walked out of the train station and waved good-bye to the couple as they went to stand in the taxi line. It looked to be a long wait on a cold day, but Babe didn’t have to worry. The Colonels had sent a car, a black Stuttgart with a driver who held up a hand to acknowledge Babe as he walked toward him.