Missing in Action (20 page)

“But don't take a bunch of chances.”

“Okay. I'd rather not die, if you want to know the truth.” Ken smiled. “How come you didn't mind working with me, Jay?”

“I don't know. It turned out you were just a regular guy.”

“No, I'm not. I'm the coolest guy you ever met.”

“Yeah.” But when he said it, Jay felt tears coming, and he turned away. He pretended he needed to get some more water, and he walked back to the house.

•  •  •

Hal came to practice Monday night, and Ken came some of the nights that week too. The boys didn't get a whole lot better, but they learned a few things. They started running the bases better, and the outfielders learned which guy to throw the ball to after somebody got a hit.

On Saturday, Hal and Gordy's dad drove cars out to Topaz, so the boys didn't have to take the bus. Gordy's mom almost had a stroke about that, but Brother Linebaugh said he'd always wanted to take a look at the camp for himself.

Jay had heard all about Topaz, but he was surprised by what it was really like. The houses were long wooden buildings, like army barracks, with only tar paper on the outside. They sat in rows and in blocks, reaching way out a mile each way. Out beyond the wire fences there was nothing but desert, not one tree anywhere. He saw all the gray dirt, like powder, that Ken had told him about, even saw how it could blow when a breeze would kick up. He noticed, too, the way people had done their best to make things look nice: with greasewood cut to look like decorations and white rocks set out to line the walkways.

It was a sad-looking place, in a way, but the people didn't look down in the mouth. When the boys reached the baseball field, in the center of the camp, a lot of the people from the camp had come over to watch. There were teenagers in bunches, and lots of parents, some of them sitting on a little set of bleachers.

“Hey, look at that girl,” Gordy said. “Wow. She's a knockout.”

There was a girl in a black skirt, about knee length, with a sleeveless blouse. She had her hair in a ponytail. She
was
cute. So were a lot of the girls. Some of them were doing cheers, yelling that their team was going to win. It was sort of like going over to the high school in Delta—except for the dirt and the tar-paper barracks.

“Come with me for a second,” Ken said to Jay. The two walked down a dirt street past maybe a dozen of the barracks, and then Ken turned in at one. He knocked on a door at one end, then opened the door and said, “Ma, are you here?”

Jay heard a high-pitched voice answer, but not in English. Ken walked in, and then held the door for Jay. He stepped into a little square room with a coal stove on one side and a bed on the other. There were blankets hanging up, making walls. There were two wooden chairs, and a box that looked liked it had been made from scrap lumber. It was a table, kind of, with shelves underneath. Everything was pushed together close, so there was hardly any room.

“This is Jay,” Ken said in English to his mother. “The boy I work with.”

The woman bowed from the waist. “So happy to meet you,” she said, and now she sounded like Jay's mom or his grandma. She could speak English
and
Japanese. She was smiling, too, and her smile was like Ken's. She was dressed like Jay's mother, in a housedress with little flowers on it, but her hair was more fancy, sort of wound up on her head.

He didn't know what to do. He bowed a little himself. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Is Father going to the game?” she asked Ken.

“Yes.”

One of the blankets moved, and a man stepped through. “Good morning,” he said. “How are you?”

“This is Jay,” said Ken.

Ken's father didn't bow. He reached out his hand. “Very nice to meet you,” he said, and it sounded important, the way a mayor, or someone like that, might talk. But it sounded almost like Japanese, too—not as American as the way Ken spoke. “Would you like to sit down? I'm sorry we have so little room here.”

“It's okay, Dad,” Ken said. “We have to get over to the game. I just wanted Jay to meet you, and I wanted to be sure you were coming.”

“Yes. I will come.”

“Dad likes baseball,” Ken told Jay. “He goes to a lot of the games.”

His father smiled and bowed his head. “Yes,” he said.

“Jay's a very good player,” said Ken. “Very good. We work together at the farm, too.”

“Yes,” Ken's father said again.

“And he's my best friend—my very best friend.”

Jay nodded. But he hadn't known that.

“After the war, we'll be friends again. I promised him I'll be careful and not get hurt. The same as I promised you.” Ken put his hand on Jay's shoulder, left it there. And as they walked back toward the diamond, he still had his hand on Jay's shoulder. And he told him something. “I wanted you to see how we live—how things are in those barracks. I don't think many people in Delta know about that.”

“It's crowded up, really bad.”

“My two sisters sleep together behind some of those blankets, and my parents sleep behind the other ones. I sleep in that room you saw, when I'm there. The heat from the stove gets to me, but not to them. In the winter, they almost freeze.”

“It doesn't seem right to crowd up people like that.”

Ken stopped and looked at him. “It isn't right. Remember that—and maybe you could tell some people.”

“Okay.”

•  •  •

When the game started, Gordy pitched. Jay played shortstop. Hal was the coach, but Ken came over and said, “Hey,
have a good game, you guys. Remember the stuff we've been teaching you.”

But the game didn't start very well. The Delta boys—they'd decided to call themselves the Rabbits, because that was what they would all be at Delta High—were up first. The Topaz team had a pitcher who didn't look big enough to throw very hard, but it turned out he could fire a good fastball, and he had a curve, too.

The first two Rabbits struck out. Jay came up next. He let a couple of pitches go by, just to see if he could get ahead of the pitcher. The trouble was, both pitches got called strikes. Gordy was in the on-deck circle—or at least where one should have been. He yelled, after the second pitch, “Hey, ump, are you blind? Both those pitches almost hit the dirt.”

People in the bleachers didn't yell back at him, but Jay heard some of them laugh, like they figured Gordy didn't know what he was talking about.

Jay swung at the third pitch and at least got some wood on it. He bounced a grounder toward the second baseman, who scooped it up like a pro and flipped it over to first before he was halfway down the baseline. That was the end of the first inning for the Rabbits.

Gordy took a pounding. He was trying to throw too hard, and he was throwing wild. He walked two batters, and then he started aiming his pitches, trying to throw strikes, and the Topaz guys started hitting
shots all over the place. Jay made two good plays at shortstop, both on ground balls, or the inning might have gone on the rest of the day. When a guy finally hit a pop-up and Gordy waved everyone off and caught it himself, the inning was finally over, but the score was 8–0.

Gordy started out the next inning and acted like a big leaguer, knocking dirt off his shoes with his bat and spitting on his hands. But he swung three times and never touched the ball. It was three up, three down for the Rabbits again.

When Gordy walked back to the mound, he yelled to his teammates, “Come on, now. Let's show these guys we can play this game.”

That caused more of the people in the crowd to laugh. Jay saw the people in the bleachers talking to one another and smiling. He could tell they didn't think much of the team from town. Hal was clapping and calling out, “Buckle down now, boys. Let's get some outs.”

One thing Jay had learned, Hal did know a lot about baseball. He was kind of fun, too. He liked to make jokes and everything. Gordy liked him—even though Gordy still thought
he
was the boss of everyone.

The guy who played first base, quite a tall guy, was coming up to bat. “What are you grinning about?” Gordy yelled at him.

“At you. And that pitch you call a fastball.”

Gordy didn't
answer him. He turned away and looked toward Jay. “All right. Let's
show
these guys,” he said.

Gordy turned around, stepped on the little board that was used for a pitching rubber, and let fly with a pitch that flew way over the catcher's head and all the way to the screen. Maybe that was a way of showing off his fastball, but it got another big laugh from all the Topaz players—and from the crowd, too. The next pitch was in the dirt.

“Come on, Gordy, just pitch to him,” Jay yelled. It was probably the first time he'd ever tried to give Gordy any advice. But Gordy nodded, as if he knew already that was what he had to do. His next pitch wasn't so hard, and it was over the plate. The tall kid took a hard swing and topped the ball. It bounded toward Dwight, who was playing second. The ball looked easy enough to handle, and Dwight got himself in front of it. But then it took a crazy bounce, off to the left. Dwight stabbed across his body at the ball and got a little leather on it, but it bounced off his glove and rolled into right field. At least Will, out in right, hustled in, and he held the batter to a single.

“What's wrong with this field?” Gordy shouted to the umpire. “It's got rocks on it or something. How are we supposed to get anybody out if the ball bounces around like that?”

The umpire smiled a little, and some of the people
in the crowd gave Gordy a hard time. “We play on the same field,” one of the players yelled. And someone in the bleachers called out, “Get some strikeouts—the way our pitcher does.”

He thought that was fairly polite, and exactly what Gordy had coming, but ol' Gordy was fuming. He wound up and threw another pitch in the dirt. Lew was playing catcher. He managed to block the ball, so at least the guy at first didn't take second.

Gordy got the ball back, and he stared hard before he wound up. He took something off the next pitch, and the batter mistimed his swing. He scooted a little grounder off the end of his bat, straight back toward Gordy. Gordy probably should have taken the guy at first and gotten the sure out, but he spun around and looked toward second. Jay was already breaking to the bag. Gordy threw the ball for the force-out, and maybe threw too hard. The ball sailed, but Jay went up after it, caught it, and came down behind the bag. He lunged for the base, but the tall kid who had been on first was barreling in hard. He slid with his foot high, caught Jay in the chest, and sent him flying.

Jay landed on his side and rolled over in a puff of dirt, like smoke. His vision was swimming, maybe from the blow he'd taken, maybe from the dirt. He scrambled up as fast as he could, the ball still in his glove. But just as he got to his feet, he saw Gordy there,
driving his fist into the tall kid's jaw, then rolling over on top of him. And then Gordy was scrambling back up and so was the Japanese player. He popped Gordy in the eye, and he went down again.

By then guys were coming from every direction. They grabbed one another, pushing and shouting, and more fists flew. Jay was wondering what to do when a fist caught him in the side of the head. He didn't go down, but he turned and took another punch that caught him in the neck. He grabbed the guy who had hit him, and the two tumbled onto the ground. He had the kid in a headlock and was squeezing with all his strength. About then, someone grabbed him and jerked him to his feet. It was Ken. “Stop it, Jay. Back away,” he was saying.

He did back off, and by then the umpire and Hal were out there, pulling kids apart. It took a couple of minutes to get the two teams separated. Then they all stood back and glared at one another. “We're not going to have any more of this,” Ken was yelling. “I'll call this game right now unless you're willing to step up and shake hands.”

No one moved. Jay thought he wouldn't mind getting back in the car. He saw no reason to keep the game going. He glanced around and thought he could see that most of the guys on his team felt the same way. It was almost better to call off the game on account of a fight—and tell that story back in Delta.
Who wanted to admit that they got knocked all over the place on the field?

“Well, which is it?” Ken asked. “Are you going to shake hands and then play some ball, or are we calling the game off?”

He could see the tall kid who had slid with his foot in the air. He was looking down at the ground. Maybe he was ashamed. Gordy had his hands on his hips, but he didn't look so mad anymore. And then Jay saw him start to smile, and the smile turned into his big-teeth grin. “Hey, my eye is swelling shut. You got me good,” he said.

The tall kid looked up, obviously surprised.

“That's the best fight I've ever been in—at least in a baseball game,” Gordy went on.

He saw some of the Japanese kids start to smile.

“I fought a kid at school one time, but he punched like a girl. You guys can go after it. I gotta hand it to you.”

The smiles were getting bigger.

“I'll tell you what. Let's play, and I'll pitch with one eye. But you better look out for my fastball now. I can't even see right.”

“What fastball?” one of the kids said, and everyone laughed. Both teams. Even Ken and the umpire.

“Okay, here's what I'll do,” said Gordy. “I'll let Chief pitch. He's got a good arm. Maybe he can get somebody out. But let's play ball.”

So they all shook hands and went back to playing, and Jay pitched. He wasn't great, but as it turned out, he was better than Gordy. He even got a couple of strikeouts when the Topaz team started putting in their weaker players. He also got a hit off their second pitcher, a double down the left-field line, and then Gordy smacked a single up the middle and Jay scored the only run for the Rabbits. He didn't know what the score turned out to be, and he didn't want to know, but he was sure it was way more than twenty for the Topaz team and just that one for the Rabbits.