Two in the Field Read online

  As expected, they walked our man to load the bases and set up a force-out. With Alex cheering raucously, I stepped to the plate and called for a low pitch. The Keokuk hurler whizzed the ball inside. My vision and coordination seemed as good as ever as I smashed the ball down the left-field line. Foul, but not by much. The pitcher looked thoughtful. I was bigger than anybody on the field, and I’d demonstrated what could happen if I got too fat a pitch. He ducked his head slightly as he wound up again. The ball shot straight at me. I flinched involuntarily, then felt foolish as it broke across the plate.

  “Strike!” called the ump.

  Next came a fastball that I socked foul even harder than the first one. Concluding that I was a dead pull hitter, the Western captain waved his fielders around to the left.

  Two strikes. I’d looked awful on the curve, so it wasn’t hard to guess that another one was coming. The pitcher wound up—yes, the head bob—and the ball flashed at me. I forced myself to hold position and keep my weight back. The ball broke sharply, farther outside than before. At the last instant it looked like it might nip the outside corner. I swung desperately, butt poked back, arms reaching. Through some miracle the bat made contact, a “plunk,” and I saw the ball wobbling over first base and dropping fifty feet beyond, just inside the foul line. Given where they’d shifted on me, I couldn’t have thrown to a better spot.

  “Go, Sam!” yelled Croft.

  Legs and feet protesting, I pumped around first like a crazed dinosaur. I made second standing up when they elected to throw to the plate to nail our runner from first. But the other two had scored to tie the game. I stood there panting, more relieved than elated. Now Sweasy couldn’t blame a loss on me. In the stand, Alex sounded like he was going nuts. Sweasy soon sent him into new ecstasies by drilling a gapper that scored me easily to put us ahead.

  The Westerns went down 1-2-3 in the final frame, and Sweasy looked pleased with the victory. In the “clubhouse,” however, his face fell when he received the pay envelope.

  “How bad?” Croft asked.

  “Sixty-eight bucks.” Sweasy slammed the envelope on the bench. “Our share for both games!”

  “Shoot,” Croft muttered.

  “The goddamn Browns’ stock company raised twenty thousand!” Sweasy said bitterly. “Signed practically the whole Atlantic nine out of Brooklyn and now they’re sellin’ season tickets, for chrissakes!”

  “Browns?” I said to Croft.

  “Brown Stockings,” he said. “Used to be the Empires.”

  I remembered them. In ’69 we’d thrashed them in a rain-shortened match in Cincinnati, then again in St. Louis on our way to the Coast. They were amateurs then. It seemed that recruiting high-priced Easterners and wearing colored sox was still the formula for success.

  “They whupped Chicago today, 10-0,” Sweasy went on. “It came over the wire. All St. Looie is celebrating.”

  “The papers’ll scarcely mention us,” Croft said glumly.

  Sweasy pulled his clothes on with stiff movements, then rose with a muffled groan and headed outside.

  “He gets the rheumatiz somethin’ terrible,” Croft said. “It was better today than it’s been.”

  Which accounted for Sweasy’s rusty look in the field. But wasn’t he too young for arthritis? Maybe he had another bone-and-joint disorder. In any case, it explained his career hitting the skids.

  “Okay,” I said to him outside, “where are Cait and Andy?”

  He scowled, then took a slow breath. “Fowler, you did me a good turn today, but I don’t fancy talking about that old stuff. Andy’s in Boston. He picked Harry Wright over me. Same’s he picked you before.”

  That wasn’t how I remembered it, but my friendship with Andy had always been a touchy point for Sweasy. The two of them had been boyhood pals. “I’m out here and they’re in the East,” he said. “Harry won’t even bring his club to play us—says we can’t guarantee a gate. That good enough for you?”

  “And Cait?”

  “Caitlin …” He said it Cat-leen. “Andy’s beaut of a sister. She was too good for me, too.”

  “I just want to know where—”

  “Washington City was the last place I saw her,” he snapped. “She paid a visit to Andy in ’71 after we signed there. Said she was fixing to leave Cincinnati.”

  That didn’t sound good. “And go where?”

  “She didn’t know yet.”

  “Was she well? How’d she look?”

  “Sickly … like she looked after Colm got killed.”

  Grieving over me, I reflected. Christ, I had to find her!

  “First Colm and then Fearghus,” he went on. “Small wonder if Caitlin thought herself a curse to the men she fancied.”

  Cait fancying Fearghus O’Donovan? Bullshit! Just the thought of it provoked a swell of indignant anger.

  “Queer how Fearghus came to die out in ’Frisco,” Sweasy went on, a malicious tone edging his words. “Right after you refused to go back with us.”

  O’Donovan advancing with his revolver on the precipice of Russian Hill … eyes staring wildly at the shadow of Colm as he plunges past me over the edge …

  “Queer, the timing of it,” he said pointedly. “And then you disappearing.”

  With a sick feeling I watched him walk off. Cait couldn’t possibly have thought for a second that I had a hand in killing O’Donovan. Could she?

  For the sake of company, I’d thought about asking to tag along with the Reds as far as St. Louis. Hell with it. I’d make my own way.

  “You gonna play for Cap’n Sweasy again?” Alex said as we neared the train station.

  “Doesn’t look too likely.”

  “But you struck the tying blow!”

  At the station I thanked them and started to climb down. Alex put his hand on my arm. “Would you?” he said. He handed me his ball and the scorecard pencil. Touched, I signed below Sweasy’s scrawl.

  At the ticket window I paid full fare to Boston via Rockford and St. Louis. I was fading fast, desperate for rest. A sleeping berth cost an extra dollar.

  “They’re as comfortable as home,” the agent claimed.

  “How many per berth?”

  “Two.”

  “In that case, consider me a couple.” Wanting privacy, I gladly forked over the dollar.

  I discovered that he hadn’t exaggerated. Drapes sectioned off the berths, and there were plush cushions to sleep on. I practically dove into them.

  I woke up only once. We must have hit a rough patch of track; things were bouncing and jostling. The clacking of the wheels was very loud. I separated the window curtains and peered out. Moonlight silvered the prairies. I thought I saw a coyote scurry into the brush where a creekline cut a dark curve.

  1875 …

  A moonlit night almost a century before my birth.

  I was heading to Boston to rejoin my old comrades. Some of them, anyway. Even if Cait wasn’t there, Andy would tell me where to find her. Odd, though, that I still felt a tiny pull from the opposite direction.

  “Gotta get up, suh.”

  He came into focus, a train porter.

  “Please, suh, gotta make up the cah.” Slow, liquid, southern accents. “I done the rest while you slept, but I cain’t put it off no more.”

  “Sure.” I lifted my foggy head and reached for my money belt. It wasn’t under the cushion where I’d put it. I catapulted to my feet and the porter stared at my jockey shorts. I upended all the cushions, panic setting in. Nothing. I looked around in sick bewilderment as I realized that my money belt wasn’t the only thing missing.

  My clothes and train ticket were gone too.

  FIVE

  Looking miserable, the porter brought in the woman who’d washed and pressed my clothes. She said that she’d hung them outside my berth at dawn. I’d slept straight through as the train emptied that morning. Since the car wouldn’t be used again until evening, the cleanup people had worked elsewhere and not discovered me until noon. The porter s
wore that none of them had robbed me.

  “When your duds wasn’t taken in, suh, that gave somebody the idea.” He theorized that the thief risked a peek, saw I was dead to the world, stepped inside and cleaned me out. “Stealing your duds would keep you from chasin’ after ’em too fast.”

  It seemed as plausible as anything else.

  “I’ll bring some things from the ‘lost’ bin in the station house,” the porter said hopefully. “Maybe somethin’ll suit you.”

  Not surprisingly, it proved to be a wretched selection. I climbed into baggy, sprung-kneed trousers three inches short, boxlike brogans undifferentiated between right and left, and a homespun nubby wool shirt—the only one big enough—in which I’d roast by day but at least be snug at night.

  The porter stepped back to see the total effect, and tactfully kept his opinion to himself. “Where you headed, suh?” he asked.

  Good question. “It was Boston.”

  “You got folks heah, suh?”

  I shook my head. He regarded me silently. I hadn’t shaved for three days. The jockey shorts, the stubble, sleeping like a zombie—he must wonder if I’d really had any money. I searched for a way to demonstrate that I was honest.

  “Heah, suh.” His outstretched hand held assorted coins, his tips from this trip. “To help you reach your folks.”

  I took them gratefully. Later I’d have the paranoid thought that after robbing me he’d offered the coins to deflect suspicion. But I didn’t really believe it. The man had a good heart and simply felt sorry for me.

  Meanwhile, somebody was using my ticket. In the station I told my story to the bowler-hatted railroad detective, a lantern-jawed tough-guy type who pointed out that a thief would likely sell the ticket, not use it himself, and even if it could be traced—which it couldn’t—the matter would boil down to my word against somebody else’s. As for the nearly two hundred dollars in gold, St. Louis was the connecting point for all western lines, and by now the thief could be on his way anywhere. No way I’d see my money again. In the unlikely case you had it, his attitude implied.

  When he learned that I was from San Francisco, his eyes swept once again over my ramshackle clothes and unshaven face.

  “What was your business in Keokuk?”

  “Working on a story,” I lied. “I’m a journalist—”

  “A what?”

  “Newspaperman.” The temperature was hot and I was sweating inside the heavy shirt. “Travel stories,” I improvised. “I see a lot of country.”

  “You’re following a ‘story’ to Boston?” Disbelief laced his voice. “For what paper?”

  “The Chronicle.” I knew from microfilm files that it existed now. “The Red Stockings traveled from Cincinnati to play there in ’69. Now that they’re based in Boston, my editor wants a follow-up.”

  “So he’s sending you clear across the country to write about … baseball?”

  I nodded.

  “Telegrapher’s around the corner,” he said briskly. “Let’s have that editor wire you some cash.”—

  Uh oh. “Look, I can’t afford—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “What’s his name?”

  I thought fast. “Isn’t today Sunday? He won’t be at his desk.”

  “Okay.” A tight smile. “First thing tomorrow.”

  “He’s on vacation.” I wondered if the word was in use yet. Or if people took them. “Won’t be back for another week.”

  “All right,” he said after an ominous pause. “I’ll make my report. If your money belt”—given his tone, it might as well have been satchel full of rubies—“shows up, we’ll want to get hold of you. Where’ll you be?”

  Where would I be? I shrugged helplessly.

  His stare hardened. “I’ll say it straight out: This city has enough tramps, Mr. Fowler. We provide three places for vagrants: the almshouse, the workhouse, the jailhouse. Many end up in the last.” His expression said he figured I’d be joining them.

  “I get your point.” An idea had finally begun to surface. Art Croft might help me. The trouble lay in finding him. No phonebooks yet. “How do I get to the ballpark?”

  “That way, Grand Street.” He pointed northwest. “Keep out of trouble.”

  “Right.”

  Outside the towering facade of Union Station, dodging swift-moving pedestrians and rumbling baggage wagons, I felt like a fool in my silly clothes. The feeling grew more acute as I clumped in my ill-fitting brogans past the lavish Southern Hotel, where the doorman’s eyes tracked me along the boardwalk. I knew he thought I was a bum. On an impulse I counted the money in my pocket. Eighty-two cents.

  I suppose that qualified me.

  The blocks seemed interminable in the heavy heat. Before the robbery I’d enjoyed a buoyant confidence that I was being drawn back, mysteriously but inexorably, to Cait. Now that confidence had been badly undercut, and I didn’t know what to think.

  Don’t think at all, I tried to tell myself. Just do the next thing.

  Finally the buildings thinned, and I came to a parklike square set among cultivated fields and multi-storied mansions. Visible above a high fence was a spacious grandstand bordered by flowering trees. Everything locked tight. No Sunday ball. No watchman, either. It looked like I’d have to wait till tomorrow to find Croft. I peered through the fence at manicured grass and smooth basepaths. Why had Sweasy complained?

  A sign at the entrance gate provided the answer.

  GRAND AVENUE GROUNDS

  HOME OF THE BROWN STOCKINGS

  I’d come to the wrong ballpark.

  From a passing omnibus driver I learned that the Reds’ facility lay several miles the opposite way on Grand. I asked if I could ride free, but he said it would cost him his job. Unwilling to spend any of my precious coins, I set off again.

  My feet were beginning to blister by the time I arrived. Hearing boys playing on the diamond, I stepped through broken slats in the fence and pulled off my brogans in a little patch of shade beside the bleachers. No covered stand here. Everything was fashioned more cheaply than at the Browns’ park. The neighborhood was vastly different, too: storage yards of the Missouri Pacific stretched for blocks around, and passing locomotives made the ground tremble.

  While I massaged my feet and wondered if any of the boys knew how to find Croft, an old woman laboriously pushed through a gap in the gate. She was stooped and moved as if every step hurt. Her clothes were worse than mine. Bending occasionally, she stuffed bits of paper into a burlap bag. As she neared the bleachers, unaware of me, I saw that her hands were palsied. The boys began yelling insults and one threw a rock at her.

  “Hey!” I must have looked like a monster rising from the shadow of the bleachers. The boys scattered like birds and vanished through the fence. The old woman looked mortally frightened. “I won’t hurt you,” I told her.

  She kept an eye cocked on me as she resumed her scavenging, cackling once as she deposited a wadded-up newspaper in her bag.

  “What do you do with the paper?” I asked.

  “What yer think?” she said tartly. “Sell it.”

  “How much you get?”

  “Fi’teen cents.” She cocked her head as if challenging me to find fault. “Every five pounds.”

  A recycling program straight out of Dickens.

  “I’m special for rags,” she said. “Got to wash ’em, but the rate’s good. Five cents a pound-weight for cotton, six for soft woolen.” She rattled it off with an expert’s flair.

  “Tell you what.” I put a penny on a bleacher plank. “If that’s today’s paper, I’ll buy it from you.”

  She set it down, snatched the coin, triumphantly crowed, “Yestiddy’s,” and headed off the field.

  As Croft had figured, the sporting page was devoted almost totally to the Browns’ shutout of Chicago. The Reds’ road victory got three terse sentences at the bottom. I found what I wanted, SCHEDULE OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES FOR MAY, and ran my finger down the column.
Boston was scheduled at Hartford on the 18th. Eight days from today. Spurred by the awareness that Twain now lived in a magnificent new house in Hartford, a plan began to form in my brain.

  I dozed through the afternoon heat, then set out along the Missouri Pacific tracks, my brogans crunching on the gravel bed. A plume of smoke appeared ahead, followed by the warning jangle of a locomotive’s bell. I climbed the embankment and watched it thunder past, a huge historical toy come to life: cowcatcher and wheels bright red; brass gleaming on the boiler’s rims and funnel-shaped stack and bell and square-framed light. A coal car bore the letters ST L. K.C. & N. R.R. I would learn that “N” stood for North Missouri. After the coal tender came boxcars, smaller and flatter than modern ones, but still formidable as they swayed and rattled past. A few of their doors stood open.

  I focused on those.

  It’s one thing to consider riding the rails, which in my boyhood had seemed appealing and romantic. It’s quite another to crouch near a rushing train and imagine trying to swing aboard. No way I’d dare it at that speed.

  “You look adrift, pard,” a nasal voice said behind me. “Care to plant yourself over here?”

  A man lay on his side beneath a bush, propped on an elbow. Puffy sideburns framed his narrow face, graced with a beak nose and alert brown eyes. He was quite small and looked to be in his early twenties.

  “Shyness befits virgins,” he said when I hesitated, the nasal tones mocking but friendly as he held up a blue long-necked bottle. “Care for a smile?”

  I caught a potent whiff of moonshine. Short-term relief. It was tempting but a buzz wasn’t what I needed just then. And who knew what unwelcome surprises the whiskey might hold for my immune system.

  “Won’t do?” He tilted the bottle and wiped his mouth. “You looked like you was set on catchin’ out.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You know, hoppin’.”

  I gathered he meant jumping the train.

  “It’s plain you’re green.” The mocking tone again. “But I don’t necessarily agree with Miz Silk. She called you a lunatic.”