The Big Rock Candy Mountain (74 page)

They looked at each other, and both laughed. It was funny, in a way, how they schemed on one end of a balcony while Chet and Laura plotted heaven only knew what on the other. “I guess they never get too old to need taking care of,” Elsa said. “How's business going?”

“Yesterday,” Bo said, “I bought another thousand bucks worth of U. S. Steel.”

“How much does that make?”

He winked. “Mama,” he said, “we may not be as rich as we'd be if we played the market right, but we've got eighteen thousand dollars' worth of stock in that safety deposit box, and we own every nickel's worth of it.”

“Eighteen thousand,” Elsa said. It seemed an enormous sum.

“I figured up our assets the other day,” Bo said. “We're worth pretty close to thirty thousand, counting everything. Give me time to multiply that by ten and we'll retire.”

Elsa smiled. “Remember when you first started you said you'd make a few trips and get a stake and get into some business. Then you got knocked over and had to make it up. Then Heimie spoiled things for you in Great Falls and we had to make that up. But you always said when you got ten thousand dollars ahead you'd get out of this business, Bo.”

“You know what the interest on ten thousand would amount to?” Bo said. “Even if you had it in seven percent preferred stock you'd only get seven hundred a year off it. How long could you live on seven hundred?”

“But you've got more than ten thousand. You've got two or three times that much.”

“You never figure right when you're down,” Bo said. “Ten thousand looks like a million from where we used to be. But you can't get into any kind of business with only that kind of capital. You got to put up dough.”

“But you'll have to get out sometime,” she said. “It isn't fair to the kids. Bruce'll be going to college this fall. What if you got into trouble and all his friends knew what you did? What if all Chet's friends knew it?”

“What do you want?” he said, eyeing her somberly. “Want me to sit on my tail and let what we've got dribble away?”

“You know what I want. I want you to find some business that we don't have to be ashamed of. The kids feel it, Bo. They don't like to bring their friends around the house. They have to lie about what you do. It isn't fair to them.”

“Well, I'm keeping my eyes open,” he said. “You can't just rush into a thing blind.”

He moved impatiently and stood up at the rail to watch two boys ride hell-for-leather around the trail and out of sight into the woods. “Ho hum,” he said. “Here I thought you'd be excited at the idea of another thousand socked away.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” she said, her eyes on his, “that there are things that would make me feel better than any amount of money?”

The game had started when Bo got there. He slipped the usher a half dollar and moved down to a box on the first base line. At the end of the fourth Bill Talbot came out of the dugout to take a turn coaching at first, and Bo waved to him. After the third out Bill came over.

“How's tricks?” he said.

“Can't complain. Looks like you got a ball club this year.”

“They look pretty good, don't they?” Bill said. “You never saw a bunch of guys hit like these kids. If we had the pitching we'd be in first place by ten games.”

“You're only three games off the pace. You can make that up.”

“I got my fingers crossed,” Bill said. “Anything stirring in your league?”

“Nothing except a favor I want to ask. Maybe you can't do it, I don't know.”

“What is it?”

“You know that kid of mine.”

“The pitcher? I been seeing his name in the Copper League. Doing all right.”

“Doing pretty good,” Bo said. “I went out and caught him in the back yard one day. He's got a fast one that whistles, and a pretty good hook.”

Bill bowed himself to spit carefully in the dust and then erase the spit with his spikes. “What's the favor?”

“I was wondering if you could take the kid along on a road trip.”

Bill shook his head. “Got my quota. We can't have any extras on the payroll after the middle of May.”

“Trouble is,” Bo said, and bit the end off a cigar, “trouble is, the damn kid's got a crush on a girl and I'd like to shake him loose till he cools off, and there's nothing he'd leave her for but maybe baseball.”

Bill opened his mouth to laugh, raised his cap to cool his bald head, slipped it back on again. “You don't want me to put him on the team then.”

“He isn't ready for that, hell no.”

“Tell you what,” Talbot said. “Would he come as batboy, do you think?”

“I don't know. I should think so.”

“He wouldn't get any money, only expenses. But you could tell him I'll be looking him over. He could work out with the boys, nobody'd fuss about that.”

“I should think that would do it,” Bo said. He lighted the cigar and chuckled out a cloud of blue smoke. “It would do him good to be a batboy. He thinks he's ready to pitch to Ruth right now.”

“Tell him to come down and see me,” Bill said. “I'd like to get a longer look at him, for a fact. We need pitchers so bad that even a green one with stuff looks pretty interesting. He might set himself up for a tryout next spring.”

“Good,” Bo said. “You leave next Monday?”

“Gone for two weeks, then back for two, then gone for three. He could go this trip or wait till the August one. What about his smelter job?”

“If I know him,” Bo said, “he'll throw that overboard in a minute. And the sooner he's got out of here the better.”

He watched Bill go back to the coach's box at first, and after another inning he rose and went home. He felt so good about the way he had used his influence to give Chet a chance and at the same time to get him away from Laura that he got out a bottle of Scotch and wrapped it up and put it aside for Chet to take down to Bill when he went.

 

His slight fear that Chet would stick up his nose at a batboy's job lasted only the first minute of their conversation. Chet saw the possibilities all right.

“Jeez, let me at him!” he said. “Did he say I could work out with them?”

“Yeah. He wants a look at your stuff. But he has to put you on as batboy because his quota's full. You keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and try training a little and you might get a break out of this, boy. Bill's short of pitchers.”

Chet looked up at the ceiling and cracked his knuckles together. “Maybe somebody'll get hurt and they'll have to put me in a game,” he said.

“You won't get in any games,” Bo said shortly. “You're not on the team, for one thing. For another, you wouldn't last a third of an inning. But you might learn something.”

“If I don't I'll kiss a pig,” Chet said. “Can I take the car now?”

Bo laughed. “Don't let any grass grow under you. Yeah, if you get it back here by seven.”

“Okay.”

“What'll you do about the smelter?”

“That can fry,” Chet said. “I can't pass this up just to pitch in that league.”

“Then what'll you do all winter? Sit around on your tail?”

“That shows how much you know about it,” Chet said. “I already lined up a job at the International Harvester. I'm going to play basketball for ‘em this winter.”

“Okay, okay,” Bo said. The kid had enough ambition. Wean him away from his Laura and he'd do all right. “You better get along,” he said. “Give this bottle to Bill.”

Chet took it, stood in the doorway jingling loose change in his pocket, looked up once, then out the door. “Well, thanks, Pa,” he said uncomfortably, and went out.

He was back promptly in an hour. “All fixed,” he said, and took a basketball shot at the top of a lamp with a sofa cushion. The lamp teetered and started to fall, and he leaped to grab it. “Caught him and half the team at dinner,” he said. “Bill said I could stick around till the end of the season if I wanted.”

“I never saw anybody quite so overjoyed at getting a job as batboy,” Bo said.

“Stick around, boy,” Chet said. “I'll be on that team when it starts training next spring.”

A few minutes later Bo heard him talking on the telephone in the hall. He held his paper still, listening. “Yeah,” Chet was saying. “Bill wants to look me over this summer. No fooling. Yeah, Monday night. No, just to look me over, sort of a preliminary tryout. That's what I was thinking, you bet your life. I'll do what I can. Old John can't go on catching forever. His legs are all shot. I don't know why not. I'll sure talk you up, anyway. Tell ‘em I can't pitch to anybody but you ...”

Bo waggled the paper and grinned to himself. Big Shot, he said softly. The batboy getting jobs for his friends. He looked at his watch and got up. That half case was due down on South Temple at seven thirty.

 

After his father had gone out Chet wandered restlessly around the house. Jeezie Kly, it was all right. Two months with the Bees, sitting in the dugout with them, eating with them in diners and hotels, meeting players from all the other clubs, guys like Lefty O‘Doul and Chief Bender and Walter Mails. There was the guy with the fast one. Old Bill Talbot was no bush leaguer, for that matter. He'd been one of the best outfielders in the business in his day, and he was still good enough at forty to hit over three hundred and play a good left field more than half the games. He'd been up in the big time a long while, and he knew them all, Ruth and Hornsby and Walter Johnson and Grover Alexander and Casey Stengel and Sisler and Collins and all of them. You ought to be able to learn plenty just sitting and listening to Bill.

It was darn nice of Bill to take him along—though probably he thought he'd get his money back in a year or so when Chet made the team and strengthened the pitching staff. It was nice of the old man to speak to Bill, for that matter. Every once in a while he cropped up with something like this that made you think he was all right for sure. Like the night he took them all out on the night of graduation. Laura was still talking about what a good egg he was.

Well, he said, you made up for plenty this time. This'll make you a good egg for a long time.

He had a date with Laura at nine, but he'd stick around now till the old man came home, just on the chance that he could get the car. Laura was going to feel bad about his going, but after all he'd only be away two weeks, and then back for two, and then away three. He went into the hall to call her up. Her eyes would stick out on stems.

The doorbell rang, a faint muffled tinkling in the kitchen. Chet looked through the window in the front door, but whoever was ringing was off to the side and he couldn't see anything. He turned the knob, and the door swung in hard against his chest, pushing him against the wall.

“Say, what in ...” he said.

He was looking into the muzzle of a gun.

The man holding the gun came around the door and let two others in behind him. Pushing Chet into the front room he took a quick look in bedrooms and kitchen to make sure no one else was at home. He came back and patted Chet's pockets perfunctorily and motioned him over into a chair. “You sit down and take it easy,” he said. “This is a raid. Want to tell us where it is and save yourself trouble?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Chet said.

The other two men were already in the kitchen. Chet heard the feet of one go thumping down the cellar stairs. Because he could do nothing else, he sat in the chair while they went methodically through the house and cellar. All the time they were below Chet sat still under the eyes of the officious detective with the gun, his ears strained to hear any sound of moving. The preserve cupboard that his father had built so that it looked like a solid wall out from the furnace room, with a little six by six room back of it packed with liquor, bottles, labels, seals, alcohol, would be a find if they had sense enough to try to move the shelves. But the two came upstairs with nothing in their hands but a sack and some straw bottle sheaths. The three of them stood looking at Chet. “Where's your old man?” one said.

“He's out of town.”

“Went kind of suddenly, didn't he?” the man with the gun said sarcastically. “I saw him this afternoon.”

Chet shrugged.

“Hell with the old man,” the second man said. “Where do you keep the whiskey? You'll get off easier if you spill it.”

“What whiskey?” Chet said.

“Oh for Christ sake,” the first man said. “Don't be as stupid as you look. You aren't pulling anything off.”

The blood had drained from Chet's face. He could feel his skin dead and stiff on his bones. “Go to hell,” he said flatly.

The tableau of the three glaring at him was interrupted by a jerk from the little hook-nosed man in the middle. He held up a hand. “Shhh!” he said. In the garage beside the house a motor was cut. A car door slammed.

“Round in front, you, Ted,” the man with the gun whispered. “Joe and I'll wait for him at the back door.”

Chet wet his lips. He ought to jump and shout a warning. But the deputy had his gun out again. The old man wouldn't have a chance to run for it, and he might get shot. He closed his mouth, but he couldn't stay sitting down. As the back door opened he saw the deputy spring forward, his gun out. “I got you!” he said. He was so excited that his mouth frothed. “Don't you make a move, I got you, by God!”

Caught entirely unaware, Bo stood in the doorway, the sack of whiskey he had been unable to deliver in his arms. His eyes shot from the deputy with the gun to Chet, standing white and still in the other doorway. His lips came together and he breathed once, audibly, through his nose.