Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

Midautumn through winter was hard on him. He never knew what to do, couldn’t gauge what was expected of him when there were no balls to hit, no fellow players to jaw with. Every morning he was confronted with decisions — how to please Helen, what to eat, where to go, how to fill his time, what to wear. Come spring, he’d have a suitcase packed with his traveling clothes and most times he’d just have to step in front of his locker to know what he was going to wear; his uniform would be hanging there, fresh from the team laundry. His day would be mapped out for him — either a game or a practice or Bumpy Jordan, the Sox travel secretary, would point him to the line of cabs that would take him to the train that would carry him to whichever city they were going next. He wouldn’t have to think about meals because they’d all been arranged. Where he was going to sleep never crossed his mind — his name was already written in a hotel ledger, a bellman standing by to transport his bags. And at night, the boys were waiting in the bar and the spring leaked without complaint into summer and the summer unfurled in bright yellows and etched greens and the air smelled so good it could make you cry.

Ruth didn’t know how it was with other men and their happiness, but he knew where his lay — in having the days mapped out for him, just as Brother Matthias used to do for him and all the other boys at St. Mary’s. Otherwise, facing the humdrum unknown of a normal domestic life, Ruth felt jumpy and mildly afraid.

Not here, though, he thought, as the men in the bar began to spread out around him and a pair of large hands clapped his shoulders. He turned his head to see the big fellow who’d been down the end of the bar smiling at him.

“Buy you a drink, Mr. Ruth?”

The man came around to his side and Ruth again caught a whiff of the heroic from him, a sense of scale that couldn’t be contained by anything as small as a room.

“Sure,” Ruth said. “You’re a Red Sox fan, then?”

The man shook his head as he held up three fingers to Dominick, and his smaller friend joined him at the bar, pulling out a stool and dropping into it with the heaviness of a man twice his size.

“Not particularly. I like sport but I’m not beholden to the idea of team allegiance.”

Ruth said, “Then who do you root for when you’re at a game?”

“Root?” the man said as their drinks arrived.

“Cheer for?” Ruth said.

The man flashed a brilliant smile. “Why, individual achievement, Mr. Ruth. The purity of a single play, a single display of adroit athleticism and coordination. The team is wonderful as a concept, I grant you. It suggests the brotherhood of man and unionism of a single goal. But if you look behind the veil, you see how it’s been stolen by corporate interests to sell an ideal that is the antithesis of everything this country claims to represent.”

Ruth had lost him halfway through his spiel, but he raised his whiskey and gave what he hoped passed for a knowing nod and then he took a drink.

The mousy guy leaned into the bar and looked past his friend at Ruth and mimicked Ruth’s nod. He tipped back his own drink. “He doesn’t have a fucking clue what you’re on about, Jack.”

Jack placed his drink on the bar. “I apologize for Gene, Mr. Ruth. He lost his manners in the Village.”

“What village?” Ruth said.

Gene snickered.

Jack gave Ruth a gentle smile. “Greenwich Village, Mr. Ruth.”

“It’s in New York,” Gene said.

“I know where it is, bub,” Ruth said, and he knew that as big as Jack was, he’d be no match for Babe’s strength if he decided to push him aside and tear that mousy hair off his friend’s head.

“Oh,” Gene said, “the Emperor Jones is angry.”

“What’d you say?”

“Gentlemen,” Jack said. “Let’s remember we’re all brothers. Our struggle is a shared one. Mr. Ruth, Babe,” Jack said, “I’m something of a traveler. You name the countries of this world, there’s probably a sticker on my suitcase for every one.”

“You some kind of salesman?” Babe took a pickled egg from the jar and popped it in his mouth.

Jack’s eyes brightened. “You could say that.”

Gene said, “You honestly have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”

“Sure I do, Pops.” Babe wiped his hands off each other. “He’s Jack. You’re Jill.”

“Gene,” the mousy one said. “Gene O’Neill, in point of fact. And this is Jack Reed you’re talking to.”

Babe kept his eyes on the mouse. “I’m sticking with ‘Jill.’”

Jack laughed and clapped them both on their backs. “As I was saying, Babe, I’ve been all over. I’ve seen athletic contests in Greece, in Finland, in Italy and France. I once saw a polo match in Russia where no small number of the participants were trampled by their own horses. There’s nothing purer or more inspirational, truly, than to see men involved in contest. But like most things that are pure, it gets sullied by big money and big business and put to the service of more nefarious purpose.”

Babe smiled. He liked the way Reed talked, even if he couldn’t understand what he meant.

Another man, a thin man with a profile that was hungry and sharp, joined them and said, “This is the slugger?”

“Indeed,” Jack said. “Babe Ruth himself.”

“Jim Larkin,” the man said, shaking Babe’s hand. “I apologize, but I don’t follow your game.”

“No apologies necessary, Jim.” Babe gave him a firm shake.

“What my compatriot here is saying,” Jim said, “is that the future opiate of the masses is not religion, Mr. Ruth, it’s entertainment.”

“That so?” Ruth wondered if Stuffy McInnis was home right now, if he’d answer the phone, maybe meet Babe in the city somewhere so they could get a steak and talk baseball and women.

“Do you know why baseball leagues are sprouting up all over the country? At every mill and every shipyard? Why just about every company has a workers’ team?”

Ruth said, “Sure. It’s fun.”

“Well, it is,” Jack said. “I’ll grant you. But to put a finer point on it, companies like fielding baseball teams because it promotes company unity.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Babe said, and Gene snorted again.

Larkin leaned in close again and Babe wanted to lean back from his gin-breath. “And it promotes ‘Americanization,’ for lack of a better word, among the immigrant workers.”

“But most of all,” Jack said, “if you’re working seventy-five hours a week and playing baseball another fifteen or twenty, guess what you’re probably too tired to do?”

Babe shrugged.

“Strike, Mr. Ruth,” Larkin said. “You’re too tired to strike or even think about your rights as a worker.”

Babe rubbed his chin so they’d believe he was thinking about the idea. Truth was, though, he was just hoping they’d go away.

“To the worker!” Jack shouted, raising his glass.

The other men — and Ruth noticed there were nine or ten of them now — raised their glasses and shouted back, “To the worker!”

Everyone took a strong slug of liquor, including Ruth.

“To the revolution!” Larkin shouted.

Dominick said, “Now now, gents,” but he was lost in the clamor as the men rose on their seats.

“Revolution!”

“To the new proletariat!”

More shouts and cheers and Dominick gave up trying to impose order and started rushing around to refill drinks.

Boisterous toasts were made to comrades in Russia and Germany and Greece, to Debs, Haywood, Joe Hill, to the people, the great united working peoples of the world!

As they whipped themselves into a preening frenzy, Babe reached for his coat, but Larkin blocked the chair as he hoisted his drink and shouted another toast. Ruth looked at their faces, sheened with sweat and purpose and maybe something beyond purpose, something he couldn’t quite name. Larkin turned his hip to the right and Babe saw an opening, could see the edges of his coat and he started reaching for it again as Jack shouted, “Down with capitalism! Down with the oligarchies!” and Babe got his hand into the fur, but Larkin inadvertently bumped his arm and Babe sighed and started to try again.