J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

“That’s a lie, Aunt Kate! That’s just what Uncle Pat and Gabriel say!”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know—”

“You are on their side!”

Aunt Kate reached for his hand, but he drew it back.

“Jamesie, I’m sure I’m not on anyone’s side. How can I be? I don’t know about baseball — and I don’t care about it!”

“Well, I do ! And I’m not one bit sick — and you thought I was!”

Jamesie rolled out of bed, ran to the door, turned, and said, “Why don’t you get out of my room and go and be with them! You’re on their side! And Uncle Pat drinks near beer !”

He could not be sure, but he thought he had her crying, and if he did it served her right. He went softly down the stairs, past the living room, out the back door, and crept along the house until he reached the front porch. He huddled under the spiraea bushes and listened to them talk. But it was not about the game. It was about President Coolidge. His father was for him. Uncle Pat was against him.

Jamesie crept back along the house until it was safe to stand up and walk. He went down the alley. He called for Francis.

But Francis was not home — still with his father, Mrs Murgatroyd said.

Jamesie went downtown, taking his own special way, through alleys, across lots, so that he arrived on the Square without using a single street or walking on a single sidewalk. He weighed himself on the scales in front of Kresge’s. He weighed eighty-three pounds, and the little card said, “You are the strong, silent type, and silence is golden.” He weighed himself in front of Grant’s. He weighed eighty-four pounds, and the card said, “Cultivate your good tastes and make the most of your business connections.”

He bought a ball of gum from the machine in front of the Owl Drugstore. It looked like it was time for a black one to come out, and black was his favorite flavor, but it was a green one. Anyway he was glad it had not been white.

He coveted the Louisville Sluggers in the window of the D.&M. Hardware. He knew how much they cost. They were autographed by Paul Waner, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, all the big league stars, and if Lefty ever cracked his, a Paul Waner, he was going to give it to Jamesie, he said.

When Lefty was up with the Yankees — though they had not talked about it yet — he would send for Jamesie. He would make Jamesie the bat boy for the Yankees. He would say to Jake Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees, “Either you hire my friend, Jamesie, as bat boy or I quit.” Jake Ruppert would want his own nephew or somebody to have the job, but what could he do? Jamesie would have a uniform like the regular players, and get to travel around the country with them, living in hotels, eating in restaurants, taking taxicabs, and would be known to everybody as Lefty’s best friend, and they would both be Babe Ruth’s best friends, the three of them going everywhere together. He would get all the Yankees to write their names on an Official American League ball and then send it home to Francis Murgatroyd, who would still be going to school back in Jayville — poor old Francis; and he would write to him on hotel stationery with his own fourteen-dollar fountain pen.

And then he was standing across the street from the jail. He wondered if they had Lefty locked up over there, if Uncle Pat and Gabriel had been right — not about Lefty throwing a game — that was a lie! — but about him being locked up. A policeman came out of the jail. Jamesie waited for him to cross the street. He was Officer Burkey. He was Phil Burkey’s father, and Phil had shown Jamesie his father’s gun and holster one time when he was sleeping. Around the house Mr Burkey looked like anybody else, not a policeman.

“Mr Burkey, is Lefty in there?”

Mr Burkey, through for the day, did not stop to talk, only saying, “Ah, that he is, boy, and there’s where he deserves to be.”

Jamesie said “Oh yeah!” to himself and went around to the back side of the jail. It was a brick building, painted gray, and the windows were open, but not so you could see inside, and they had bars over them.

Jamesie decided he could do nothing if Mr Burkey was off duty. The street lights came on; it was night. He began to wonder, too, if his father would miss him. Aunt Kate would not tell. But he would have to come in the back way and sneak up to his room. If it rained tomorrow he would stay in and make up with Aunt Kate. He hurried home, and did not remember that he had meant to stay out all night, maybe even run away forever.

The next morning Jamesie came to the jail early. Mr Burkey, on duty, said he might see Lefty for three minutes, but it was a mystery to him why anyone, especially a nice boy like Jamesie, should want to see the bum. “And don’t tell your father you was here.”

Jamesie found Lefty lying on a narrow iron bed that was all springs and no covers or pillow.

“Lefty,” he said, “I came to see you.”

Lefty sat up. He blinked at Jamesie and had trouble getting his eyes to see.

Jamesie went closer. Lefty stood up. They faced each other. Jamesie could have put his hand through the bars and touched Lefty.

“Glad to see you, kid.”

“Lefty,” Jamesie said, “I brought you some reading.” He handed Lefty Uncle Pat’s copy of Liberty magazine.

“Thanks, kid.”

He got the box of Rosebud salve out of his pocket for Lefty.

“Well, thanks, kid. But what do I do with it?”

“For your arm, Lefty. It says ‘recommended for aches and pains.’”

“I’ll try it.”

“Do you like oranges, Lefty?”

“I can eat ’em.”

He gave Lefty his breakfast orange.

A funny, sweet smell came off Lefty’s breath, like perfume, only sour. Burnt matches and cigar butts lay on the cell floor. Did Lefty smoke? Did he? Didn’t he realize what it would do to him?

“Lefty, how do you throw your sinker?”

Lefty held the orange and showed Jamesie how he gripped the ball along the seams, how he snapped his wrist before he let it fly.

“But be sure you don’t telegraph it, kid. Throw ’em all the same — your fast one, your floater, your curve. Then they don’t know where they’re at.”

Lefty tossed the orange through the bars to Jamesie.

“Try it.”

Jamesie tried it, but he had it wrong at first, and Lefty had to reach through the bars and show him again. After that they were silent, and Jamesie thought Lefty did not seem very glad to see him after all, and remembered the last gift.

“And I brought you this, Lefty.”

It was Baseball Bill in the World Series .

“Yeah?” Lefty said, momentarily angry, as though he thought Jamesie was trying to kid him. He accepted the book reluctantly.

“He’s a pitcher, Lefty,” Jamesie said. “Like you, only he’s a right-hander.”

The sour perfume on Lefty’s breath came through the bars again, a little stronger on a sigh.

Wasn’t that the odor of strong drink and cigar smoke — the odor of Blackie Humphrey? Jamesie talked fast to keep himself from thinking. “This book’s all about Baseball Bill and the World Series,” he gulped, “and Blackie Humphrey and some dirty crooks that try to get Bill to throw it, but…” He gave up; he knew now. And Lefty had turned his back.

After a moment, during which nothing happened inside him to explain what he knew now, Jamesie got his legs to take him away, out of the jail, around the corner, down the street — away. He did not go through alleys, across lots, between buildings, over fences. No. He used the streets and sidewalks, like anyone else, to get where he was going — away — and was not quite himself.

SPRING ENTERED THE black belt in ashes, dust, and drabness, without benefit of the saving green. The seasons were known only by the thermometer and the clothing of the people. There were only a few nights in the whole year when the air itself told you. Perhaps a night in April or May might escape the plague of smells, achieve a little of the enchantment, be the diminished echo of spring happening ardently in the suburbs, but it was all over in a night and the streets were filled with summer, as a hollow mouth with bad breath, and even the rain could not wash it away. And winter…