Graves' Retreat (11 page)

    He struck out the next two batters and trotted back to the home team side with the crowd giving him a standing ovation.

    

    

    The fat man had himself two more soft drinks and then took the folded-up poster from inside his jacket.

    It was a crisp folder, recently printed, and if you held it close enough to your nose, you could smell the printer’s ink, which was one of the fat man’s favorite odors in all the world.

    He opened the folder and pressed it flat, and stared at the visage of T. Z. Graves and the big bold word wanted and then that glorious figure $5000 dead or alive.

    Only crazy people trifled with the railroads, which, in this year of Our Lord 1884, virtually if not literally owned the country. (It was said that in the halls of Congress, the paintings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been replaced with the portraits of J. P. Morgan and James J. Hill.)

    T. Z. Graves had not only robbed a train. He had killed a railroad employee.

    Even desperadoes as popular and pampered as the James Brothers had paid for foolishness of that magnitude, Jesse shot dead just a year and a half ago, and Frank James going through a series of bitter trials that could yet end up in his hanging.

    Just how did T. Z. Graves think he stood a chance against the might and cunning and tirelessness of the railroad?

    The fat man had some more of the cool drink and watched as Les Graves ran back to the home team side.

    The fat man smiled as his eyes followed Graves. That was one trick the railroad men, beginning way back when Allan Pinkerton was just a tyro, learned well.

    You didn’t stalk the criminal himself. You stalked his family. Because when you got the family, you got what Pinkerton liked to call “leverage.” The fat man had heard Pinkerton give a talk in St. Louis once. Pinkerton said that the Romans had learned one truth about torture-that some men you can torture for hours, days and get nothing from them. But take these same people and threaten to torture somebody they love and-the men broke almost immediately.

    The fat man leaned his arms back and enjoyed the sight of the teams trading places on the field and the men in their new straw hats and the women in their floral hats and the kids with pennants and homemade baseball caps made up to resemble those worn by the players.

    You got to a man through his loved ones, the fat man thought contentedly to himself.

    And that was just what he planned to do.

    

    

    Neely said, “Remember the year the White Stockings won twenty games in a row?”

    But T.Z. wasn’t listening. T.Z. never listened when the subject was sports. T.Z. had his women and his nightmares and that was about it.

    They stood at the north end of the bleachers, watching the game in its last inning.

    “Boy, there sure are some pretty ones in this town,” T.Z. said.

    Neely said, “There are pretty ones everywhere.”

    “Yeah, Neely,” T.Z. said, “but you never seem to do anything about it.”

    “Wasn’t my fault she ran off with that goddamn drummer.”

    “You could always try to find another one.”

    "She’d be just like Myma was.”

    “Myma wasn’t so bad.”

    “If she wasn’t so bad, why did she run off with that goddamn drummer?”

    “Maybe she got tired of your politics.”

    Neely shook his head. “I never understood that.”

    “Understood what?”

    “Why she hated me talkin’ about politics.”

    “Women don’t give a damn about things like that.”

    “Some women do. Look at the suffragettes.”

    T.Z. laughed. “The suffragettes. Hell. Who gives a damn about them?”

    But suddenly Neely wasn’t paying so much attention to their argument. Suddenly Neely wasn’t paying attention to anything but sight of a certain man way up high in the east section of bleachers.

    There was a kid behind them in the stands with a pair of field glasses.

    Neely leaned over and said, “Want to make a penny?”

    “For what?” the kid said suspiciously.

    “For your glasses?”

    “You mean buy them?”

    “Just use them.”

    “For how long?”

    Neely wanted to crack the kid across the face. The kid was ten, chunky and mean-looking.

    “For no more than a minute.”

    “What the hell are you doin’?” T.Z. asked Neely.

    “Shut up,” Neely said.

    “A nickel,” the kid said.

    “All right,” Neely agreed, tossing and flipping him a nickel. “Now give me the glasses.”

    “No more than a minute,” the kid warned.

    Neely jerked the glasses out of his hand.

    “What the hell’s going on?” T.Z. asked.

    “I already told you,” Neely said, as if to a child. “Shut up.” Then Neely turned the glasses east to the bleachers where he’d spotted the man.

    He adjusted the glasses to get the best look possible.

    The kid said, “It’s been more than a minute, I’ll bet.”

    T.Z. said, “You watch your mouth, kid.”

    “He promised,” the kid said, sounding as if he were going to start crying. “He said a minute. One minute.”

    “Shut up,” T.Z. said.

    “Shit,” Neely said, not taking the glasses from his eyes.

    “What is it?” T.Z. asked.

    “Shit,” Neely said again.

    Then he yanked the glasses from his eyes and plumped them back in the lap of the kid.

    He started walking very fast for the exit from the ballpark.

    T.Z. had to half run to keep up.

    “What’s wrong, Neely?”

    But Neely didn't say anything more than “Just keep your head down and move as fast as you can.”

    T.Z. always got scared. He was scared now. “What’s wrong, Neely? Tell me, please. What’s wrong?”

    “Like I said,” Neely said through gritted teeth. “Keep your head down and move as fast as you can.”

    Thirty seconds later they had left the ballpark. That was when Neely broke into a full run and headed for the maze of the railroad yard down in the valley below.

    T.Z., trying to keep up, said, “I’m scared, Neely. I’m real scared.”

    But all Neely could think about was the glimpse of the fat man in the bleachers and who the man was.

    And why he’d be here in Cedar Rapids.

    

    

    A home run won the game by a single run for the first team. The second team had never come this close to beating them before.

    The crowd’s applause was sparse.

    Clinton Edmonds, all curses and bluster, got up and stalked from his box seat, Susan and Byron following meekly in his wake.

    The fat man sat up in the bleachers until nearly everybody had left the park. Dusk was full in the sky now, a low and gorgeously purple dusk, with a scattering of bright stars and a full moon so vivid it looked like a painting.

    

    

    The fat man made his way carefully down the bleachers and back to the Grand Hotel, over on Second Street East. He had a last glance at Les. He would see the man later tonight.

    

    

    Harding, the team manager, went through his usual postgame talk, spiced with derision, occasional praise and finally a vaguely patriotic theme (“Our ancestors didn’t come to this country so you men could look as rotten as you did today”), and then he dismissed the team, warning them not to drink more than one bucket per man at Pearly’s tonight.

    Les did not need to be told that Harding wanted to talk to him privately.

    Les sat at the far end of the bench, elbows on hands, staring at the starry sky. So many things crowded his mind-Susan, T.Z., what a hanging would look like, the bank robbery plan Neely had outlined last night-so many things that it literally exhausted him to contemplate them.

    Then an image of May Tolan came to him, the memory of her this afternoon in the hat shop. Her eyes and the look he’d imbued them with. Yet for all his guilt over May, thought of her gave him some comfort. He was thinking of her when Harding came up.

    Instead of speaking, or standing over him as he usually did, Harding sat down next to Les, very tight, like kids on the front seat of a buckboard, and he didn’t say anything for a long time, and when he did finally speak, it wasn’t about baseball at all. He said, “Boy, don’t you love the smell of dewy grass on a summer night?”

    “It’s great,” Les said, sounding as if it were anything but great at all.

    “And haven’t you ever wondered just how many stars there are in the sky?” Harding said, sweeping his hand to the heavens as if he were a minister invoking his flock to passion for God’s handiwork. “When I was a boy, my mother always let me sleep in the front yard and I’d always fall asleep counting the stars.”

    “I was terrible tonight,” Les said.

    Harding said, “You shouldn’t think about that. You should just sit here and let this splendid night seep into your bones.”

    “We barely beat the second team. And it was my fault.”

    “Not entirely. Nobody played real good tonight. Not real good at all.”

    For a time Les said nothing. “I wish we had another pitcher.”

    “You’re being crazy,” Harding said. “And you’re not telling me the truth.”

    “About what?”

    “That’s what you’re not telling me. About what’s bothering you.”

    “Nothing’s bothering me. I’m just nervous about the game.”

    “Les, you’ve pitched for two seasons and never had any trouble at all. You’re the best ball player I’ve had in ten years of managing. And now all of a sudden-”

    Les sat there and looked at Harding in the fading light. Harding wanted some kind of explanation for Les’s performance, so Les decided to give him one. At least a partial one.

    Les told him about his experience trying out with Chicago a few seasons back. How he’d gone there a real hotshot and how for the two days preceding the actual start of training camp, he’d been fine, throwing every kind of pitch imaginable and throwing so fast and skillfully that even some of the pros had come over to watch him.

    But then came the day when he put on the uniform and took to the field and felt the hardened professional gazes of the manager and the owner and then-

    Then he tightened up and his fluid style became sluggish and strikes became balls and he beaned two batters and threw several pitches in the dirt and-

    And then he was out of training camp.

    

    

    Another yokel on his way back to Yokelville bearing the indelible mark of shame for being unable to make it as a real ball player-

    “You got scared,” Harding said gently.

    “Yes. I guess that’s what it was anyway.”

    “Scared was all.”

    “Well, whatever I got, it sure wasn’t good.”

    “Scared.”

    He looked at Harding. “Maybe that’s happening to me again.”

    “You don't have to let it.”

    “I don’t know how I could stop it.”

    “You pray?”

    “Sure I pray.”

    “Well, then go over to St. Patrick’s and pray your ass off. I always pray to St. Joseph. My old man was a carpenter. I figure that gives me special privileges. So get over there right now and pray to St. Joseph and mention my name. You’ll see a difference. I promise you.” Harding always made him feel better-he liked the man’s simple and passionate belief in his own personal world and code-and he wanted to tell him about it all-Susan and T.Z. and how he was getting drawn into a robbery he wanted no part of.

    But he couldn’t, of course.

    About Susan, Harding would simply say that he was playing out of his league and should find another game (Harding liked to put everything in sports terms) and about T.Z. and Neely, Harding would say go to the police. Harding was an honest workingman and he resented the easy way criminals elected to take. He would have no time for T.Z. and Neely, especially once he discovered they’d killed a man.

    “That sounds like a good idea,” Les said finally.

    “St. Joseph?”

    “Yes.”

    “Well, then go to it.”

    Les stood up, stretched his arms wide over his head. It felt good. “Well, at least we didn’t get beaten tonight, anyway.”

    “That’s right. You’ve got to think positive. And that’s how I want you to be at noon tomorrow.”

    “What’s noon tomorrow?”

    “That’s when Sterling gets here.”

    “But I thought the game was the day after tomorrow-”

    “It's still on for the Fourth. But they’ve decided to get here a day early so they can practice for a couple of hours in our park.”

    “Well, I guess that isn’t so bad.”

    “They’re showboats,” Harding said.

    “What?”

    “Showboats. Show-offs. They’re going to have something special planned for us tomorrow, wait and see. Something meant to intimidate us.”

    “Like what?”

    “I don’t know. But that’s their style. The time they played Minneapolis, they had their infield start singing every time a good batter got up to the plate.”

    “Singing?”

    “You bet. You know how that would break a fella’s concentration? You’re standing up there and you’ve got the bat in your hand and you’re one run down and you know you’ve got to swat it out of the park and the pitcher winds up and then suddenly the shortstop starts singing this song-”