In Open Spaces (14 page)

I figure they’re just scared—scared of a life they know nothing about. But it seems a waste to shut out half the world just because they wear softer pants. And I think it simply makes sense to say hello to someone who’s sitting right next to you. As far as I know, there’s no better way of getting to know them. So after my Pioneer Days experience,
I looked for any chance I could find to make my way to St. Louis and meet up with Mr. Stanley Murphy.

My chance came in 1924, when we needed to ship a load of calves to Omaha. Neither Dad nor Jack was anxious to go, so I quickly volunteered. I contacted Mr. Murphy, who just happened to have someone else in Omaha that he wanted to get a look at that week. So once I knew the date I’d be there, he sent me the name of his hotel, and told me to contact him when I arrived. I told no one.

Dad and I moved the herd of calves to Belle Fourche, a three-day ride. We stabled them for the night at the stockyards next to the train station, and seventy-five calves and I caught the train at dawn the next morning. It was my first time on a train, and although I was twenty-two, I’m sure I was as big-eyed as a kid at his first fireworks show. I wore the suit I’d bought for Jack and Rita’s wedding; the jacket was too tight, the sleeves a little short.

The trip took two days, with a stop in Chadron, Nebraska, to feed and water the stock. I barely slept from the excitement. Even during the dark hours, I pressed my face to the window, as the countless unfamiliar lives rushed past. The click, clack, pause, click, clack, pause of the wheels became such a part of the journey, like a heartbeat, that I didn’t even hear it after a while.

I studied each town—homestead towns, mostly. There were usually just a few buildings—always a store, and a saloon or two, a post office, sometimes a hotel, a blacksmith, or a five-and-dime. But more interesting to me were the farms and ranches—the lone, miles-from-anything places like our own. I took a good look at each of these, trying to imagine as much as I could about the people who lived there. Some were easy—sod houses with chunks of earth hanging off, or crude ten-by-fourteen-foot shacks with oiled-paper windows, mud stuffed into the cracks, and a swaybacked mule out front. These belonged to the honyockers—the new settlers who were either already gone or nearly defeated, probably a winter or two away from
being pushed eastward where they came from, or further west to another dream.

Soon after we crossed the border into Nebraska, the complexion of the land changed, as if state law demanded it. Pens filled with pigs crowded the grounds around tiny homesteads, and the fields were covered with either the stubble of freshly harvested cornstalks or the brown stalks themselves, wilting from too little water or too much sun. The rolling hills were gone. The land was completely flat, with such a lack of contour that the horizon seemed to be the only thing out there.

I ate in the diner car, eyes fixed on the panorama of scenery outside. The plates, silverware, and linen looked so delicate and fine that I was afraid of breaking them. So I ate carefully, feeling a bit sophisticated. I even ordered a glass of wine at dinner the first evening. But I didn’t finish it, because I didn’t want to fall asleep. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

The stop in Chadron took nearly two hours. The calves stumbled down ramps, blinking in the daylight. But they were too tired to protest much, and the sight of water and hay shut up the few feeble complaints. They ate and drank at their leisure while I milled among them, checking for any sign of ill health while trying not to mess up my travel clothes. One calf had died, which made me angry, as I’d tried to talk Dad into leaving her behind. I hoped that whatever ailment had killed her wouldn’t spread.

Halfway across Nebraska, I saw a house that made my eyes bulge. It was a big white clapboard house with neatly painted green trim around each door and window. A white fence made of broad planks surrounded the yard, and it had the first red barn I’d ever seen. In our country, no one had the resources to paint their barn, even if the idea occurred to them. I turned to the man next to me, who’d gotten on at Chadron and hadn’t yet spoken to me. I pointed.

“Look at that house.”

He glanced out the window with a look of utter boredom, his sagging, wet eyes hardly registering any sign of life. He shrugged. “I wonder
how much corn whiskey that fella sold to pay for a place like that,” he muttered.

I didn’t realize he was joking, and I turned and studied the house. He couldn’t be right, I thought. The house was not only big, but it showed the signs of care and grooming of someone who had great devotion to the good life. I thought about the only bootlegger I knew—Bert Walters, Art’s brother, who lived in a ramshackle lean-to as far from the road as he could possibly get. And I secretly decided that this guy wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

“Are you from Nebraska?” I asked him.

“Hell no. I wouldn’t live in this godforsaken country for all the steers in Texas.” He laughed at his own joke, or wheezed, from deep in his soft chest. “I’m from St. Louis.” He looked at me, only vaguely, and raised his forehead. “That’s in Missouri.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

But despite being annoyed, the man’s smug expression made me suddenly aware of my appearance. I realized that I probably looked and acted like exactly what I was—some young guy fresh off the farm, out in the world for the first time. I tugged self-consciously at my sleeves, at the same time resenting his superior attitude, and the fact that he made no effort to hide it. He wore a bowler and a well-tailored suit, complete with gold pocket-watch chain. His skin was as pale as milk.

“You a Dakota boy?” he asked.

I cringed at the word “boy,” bit my tongue, and shook my head. “Nearly. Eastern Montana. Right in the southeast corner.”

He nodded knowingly, his lower lip extended. “Nice country. Kind of dry, though.”

“Yeah, more than ever the last few years.”

“You know anyone in Broadus?”

“Sure. Quite a few people.”

Well, despite the fact that he never dropped his little smirk, and despite my preoccupation with the scenery outside, my neighbor and
I ended up having a pleasant conversation. We had a few mutual acquaintances, and he shared my passion for baseball.

He was a farm machinery salesman, which explained why he’d been to my part of the country. His name was David Westford, and although I was a naïve farm kid, I had enough business savvy to sift through everything he said, to avoid falling into a line of questioning that might lead to promises I couldn’t keep. But he didn’t push me that hard anyway. Instead, we visited about our families, the Cardinals, and the upcoming elections.

David was from a huge mining family in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t close to them, complaining that they all tried to take advantage of his success. He said he preferred St. Louis to his home state anyway. Before I knew it, we found ourselves in the outskirts of Omaha. Dusk had just settled, a very faint orange mist, and I could barely make out the silhouettes of buildings that were taller than any I’d ever seen. We climbed stiffly from the train, and David handed me his card with the name of his hotel scrawled on the back.

“This is your first trip to Omaha, am I right?”

I nodded.

“Well, I know some real nice girls, if you’re interested.” He raised his brow.

I blushed and thanked him, shaking his sweaty hand. And although I saw little chance that I would take him up on the offer, I tucked his card in my jacket.

That night I soaked in a city that was bigger than the combined size of every town I’d ever visited. It was a clear night, five or ten degrees warmer than it would be at home, and although I was exhausted, I wanted to absorb as much as I could before I collapsed.

I walked through downtown Omaha, and was struck by the shops—shops that sold only hats or only candy. I couldn’t imagine how
they stayed in business selling just one product. And the clothes on display in the windows! I wondered where people wore such clothes. But as evening fell, people wearing those very clothes filled the streets, strolling at a leisurely pace. I had to remind myself not to stare, especially at the women, who were glorious in their sleek dresses and stylish hats. I wanted to turn and follow them. Their faces were as smooth and clear as windows, as though they’d never seen an hour of sunlight. And their lips, painted red, looked like cherries in snow. I thought about David’s offer, and the more of these beautiful women I saw, the more I considered calling him. But time passed, and my nerve faltered, and eventually I talked myself out of it.

On the streets, handbills were posted everywhere, and I stopped and read them all. Posters of Calvin Coolidge and John William Davis were pasted to walls and fences everywhere, as were pictures of the Nebraska gubernatorial candidates. And there were several other distinguished-looking candidates for lesser offices, looking stern and serious, with slogans circling their heads. There were bills for performances—music, theater, and dance, as well as ads for all kinds of household items, which reminded me of Jack. But one poster stopped me dead in my tracks. It was for a Negro League baseball game, a game between the Kanses City Monarchs and the Mobile Tigers, scheduled for eleven o’clock the next morning. I had a pencil and a notepad in my jacket, and I wrote down the details. I had called Mr. Murphy when I checked into my hotel, and we’d made arrangements to meet later in the afternoon. So I would easily be able to make it to the game.

Back at the hotel, I ate in the dining room—shrimp, breaded with crisp batter, and whipped potatoes, and buttery string beans. I’d never tasted shrimp, and although the slippery texture was strange at first, I immediately fell in love with the combination of intense fish flavor and butter-soaked flakes of breading. After a dish of chocolate ice cream, one of my favorite things, I retreated to my room bloated and content.

I took a bath in a real ceramic tub, and slid between sheets thick as
cowhide. If I had wanted to make a phone call, all I had to do was go down into the lobby. In my room were electric lights, a toilet, and a sink with running water, none of which we had at home. And the next day, I would be handling the biggest business transaction of my life. But none of those things mattered that night. There were only two things on my mind as I lay on the verge of a deep sleep—my first professional baseball game, and my tryout.

At breakfast, the scrambled eggs looked as if the grease had been scrubbed off—they were as yellow as a new gold piece. I said a silent thank-you to Mr. Murphy for the dollar he had sent me to help pay for a little nicer hotel. The eggs tasted as good as they looked, with a hint of cheese. I held a copy of the Omaha World-Herald and reveled in learning yesterday’s news rather than last week’s.

I caught a carriage to the stockyards, where I met our buyer Mr. Tanner, a tall man with a friendly manner. He buried his fingers in the calves’ coats, and lifted their upper lips, checking teeth. He kneaded their flanks and ran his hand along their ribs. I felt proud surveying the corral filled with plump calves pressed together into a massive brown hide. We had done well with this stock, thanks to a slight increase in moisture and some hard work. Mr. Tanner smiled broadly and nodded.

We weighed the calves, and after figuring the total, Mr. Tanner wrote a check. When I looked at the amount, my heart rose to my neck, and I pressed my thumb and forefinger hard together to make sure a sudden gust of wind didn’t tear the slip of paper from my grasp. As soon as we shook hands and talked about what a pleasure it was to do business, I found a restroom, where I tucked the folded check into my boot.

I arrived at the baseball field nearly an hour early, so I got to watch the Tiger and Monarch players go through their warm-ups—stretching,
running, and fielding grounders and fly balls. I sat in the rickety old bleachers and would have been a happy man if someone had instructed me to stay there and watch these guys for seven days straight. These professionals made every motion, from a diving catch to whacking the ball three hundred and fifty feet, look as natural as opening a door. For that glorious hour, I lost all desire to do anything athletic again. It felt as if any effort to emulate these men would be an insult to their gifts.

The Monarchs took the field first, but it was the Tiger pitcher that commanded all attention from the very first strike he threw. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, and I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt. He pranced, he twisted his body into positions that would rip the muscles of mere mortals, and he threw the ball so hard I caught myself flinching along with the hitters.

On his windup, he sometimes froze in the middle of his motion, bringing his body to a standstill, as if some unseen camera was aimed at him, demanding that he strike a pose. He seemed to do this without thinking—never in the same position, and never enough to throw off his control. And he smiled. Always he smiled, a subtle curl of his mouth.

There were no programs, so I finally asked someone who he was. Even his name had a certain magic—Satchel Paige.

I sat with a sack of peanuts in my hand and forgot they were there, holding them as if I was waiting for their owner to come along and claim them. And I was sitting there like that—as motionless as the players were fluid—when a hand suddenly reached into the bag, plucking several peanuts from inside. I flinched, following the arm to its owner.

“Hello, Blake.” The fleshy smile of David Westford greeted me. “You know, I thought later that I should have mentioned this game to you. I’m glad you found your way here.” We shook hands.

“Good to see you, too, David. This Paige guy is something else, huh?”

“The son of a bitch isn’t even human. He beats our St. Louis team every damn time. Or I should say kills us every time. It’s never even close.”

“Well, I feel privileged just to see these guys play,” I said. “We don’t see this kind of talent up our way.”

He nodded. “Yeah. There’s some good players in this league. I like watching these boys play. ’Course, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the major leagues. They might be just as fast, maybe even faster, but they aren’t as quick, if you know what I mean.” David smiled, pointing to his temple. I emitted a slight “hm,” as unenthusiastically as I could, but I could tell from his expression that he assumed I agreed with him.