The House of Daniel (44 page)

And they played better ball than we did. Oh, we were good enough to stand a chance against them. But if we played a season in the PCL, we'd finish a lot closer to the bottom than to the top. You've got to keep your limits in mind.

So we played in Salem after The Dalles. And we played in Corvallis, and we played in Eugene. We got a day off in Eugene, too, because it poured rain. Just as well, too—the night between those days had a full moon. You want to stay inside with things locked up tight when werewolves prowl.

Harv fidgeted like a cat with fleas even so. He was the one who had to fix up our schedule, and the one who had to shell out for our lodging with no money coming in that day. I have to say, though, the rest of us weren't too sorry. Rain was about the only thing that kept us from going out on the field every doggone day. Wes put it best: “Weather's been too damn good lately. We've been working our fannies off.”

“You've still got a good bit left of yours,” Harv said. No, he didn't need to swear to needle.

Wes looked wounded to the core. He looked so very wounded, he probably practiced in front of a mirror somewhere. “I've got big bones,” he said, as dignified as an English butler only without the silly accent.

We went over to Springfield the next day to play the Booth-Kelly Axemen. They were—surprise!—a sawmill team. Their uniforms had a red diamond with a white BK in it on the left breast. Some people from Eugene were in the crowd. The two towns are only a few miles apart. You could tell the fans from Eugene—they booed the Axemen and cheered for us.

If I remember straight, we won that one. I know I remember the muddy field. It wasn't like playing in the mud in Texas. This stuff was chilly. So was the weather. People from Oregon told me it could get hot there. I don't think anybody told the sun, though.

We took US 99 down to Medford. The highway crosses one branch of the Umpqua River or another three or four times. We liked the name. Every time we went over the river, we'd all start going “Ump-qua! Ump-qua! Ump-qua!” like a bunch of bullfrogs. You spend that much time riding in a bus, you find ways to make your own fun. You'd better.

Medford's town team was called the Nuggets. They played at a fairgrounds ballpark with an auto-racing track around it. Harv kinda clucked when he took a gander at the stands. “I thought this place was bigger,” he said sadly. “I bet it don't even hold two thousand.”

It was packed, though. In a town like that, a long way off from anywhere big, the House of Daniel was something to come out and see. So we put on a special show for 'em. We did a fancy phantom infield. We even ran a phantom outfield, going back under flies that weren't there and firing 'em to the bases, where the guys pretended to catch 'em and slapped tags on imaginary baserunners.

The game turned out to be tough. The two things I recollect about their pitcher were his jughandle ears and his fastball. He smoked it in there, and he didn't have bad control. Amos caught one square and hit it out, but most of the time we flailed away.

We were hanging on to a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the ninth when a Nugget doubled with one out. I got the ball back in to Eddie. He carried it over to Frank, then walked back to second base. Frank straddled the rubber and peered in at Amos for the sign. He shook his head.

If you stand on the rubber without the ball, it's a balk. You can straddle it all you please, though. The Nugget led off second. Fidgety Frank ignored him and kept shaking Amos off. Eddie strolled over to the runner and slapped him on the can with his glove.

Then he showed the base umpire the glove had the ball in it. “You're out!” the ump shouted, and held his fist in the air with his thumb sticking up.

“I'm what?” the Nugget yelled, even louder. Eddie showed him the ball, too. The Nugget didn't walk off the field as though he'd just watched zombies eat his ma. He hollered something that dented four or five commandments all at once, and he tried to knock Eddie's block off.

Everybody on both sides ran out to second base. Most of it was pushing and shoving and wrestling, nothing more. At the bottom of the pile, Wes ground that hotheaded Nugget's face in the dirt, accidentally on purpose. After a while, we untangled. The ump threw the hothead out of the game, and we got on with things. Fidgety Frank made their next hitter bounce back to him. That was the ballgame.

Eddie had a bruise on his cheek. That haymaker got at least partway home. He was grinning all the same. He slapped me on the back almost as hard as the Nugget had swung on him. “Try it when it counts, you told me, Snake,” he said. “They won't be looking for it, you said. Boy, did you hit that one on the button!”

“Hey, I'm glad it worked,” I said. “Two outs with nobody on is a lot better'n one out and a man on second.”

“You betcha!” He pounded me on the back again.

The Nuggets' manager wasn't so happy. “Of all the chickenshit things to do—” he growled at Harv.

“I can't help it if your guy went to sleep out there,” Harv said sweetly.

“But the hidden-ball trick? C'mon! Nobody uses the hidden-ball trick! Is it any wonder that Olaf got sore at your second baseman?”

“He made the bonehead play. Eddie didn't. And when things started up again, your old Olaf looked worse'n Eddie. We don't want to play rough, but we'll finish anything you start,” Harv said. Baseball's Golden Rule is
Do unto others as they do unto you
. Somewhere or other,
as you would have them do unto you
got changed a bit.

“Aw, manure!” the Medford manager said. Something like that, anyhow. Harv smiled back at him. You win the game, you can afford to smile. You win the game because you worked the hidden-ball trick, you can
really
afford to smile.

*   *   *

We drove east to Klamath Falls through the forested mountains. They've done a lot of logging in Oregon, but they've still got a demon of a lot of trees left. The ones covering those mountainsides were firs and spruces and pines and hemlocks and oaks and others I couldn't name. The shrubs underneath the trees were wild lilac and manzanita and something that grew lots of little red berries.

There wasn't much traffic. Deer kept bounding across the road. Once Harv screeched the brakes so hard, he spilled half of us out of our seats. If he hadn't, we could've brought some more venison into Klamath Falls tied to our fender. Deer are stupid. They don't look both ways, or even one way, before they jump out. They just do it, and sometimes they pay the price.

I saw a black bear in a roadside clearing, making a pig of itself on a carcass. Maybe it had killed that deer a little while before, or maybe it was filling up on carrion. Bears are fussier than buzzards, but not always a lot fussier.

And I saw … Well, I saw two or three of 'em before I decided my imagination wasn't playing tricks on me. Even after I decided it wasn't, I had no idea what in blazes to call 'em. So I asked: “What's eight or nine feet tall, all covered over in shaggy brown hair, and walks on its hind legs?”

“That would be Harv's uncle,” Wes answered. “Didn't you hear? He's playing left for us when we get to Klamath Falls.”

“Looked more like your grandpa to me,” Harv said, and turned some of the laughs back on Wes.

Laughs were fine, but I still wanted to know. “C'mon, you guys,” I said. “What's the right name for those—things? Whatsits?”

“You said your grandpa was called Elmer, didn't you, Wes?” Harv said. Once those two started going at each other, they didn't want to stop.

Eddie actually answered my question: “Around here, they call 'em bigfoots, or sometimes bigfeet or bigfeets. The Indian name for 'em—or
an
Indian name for 'em, anyhow—is sasquatch.”

“Are they people or animals or devils?” I asked.

“Somewhere in there,” Wes said, which didn't help at all. He went on, “Probably closest to people. But what are people except animals with some devil in 'em?”

Harv breathed out, hard. “You need to read the Good Book more, Wes.”

“‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?'” Wes quoted, to show Harv that he did—and to annoy him. Then he said, “That always seemed like a real good question to me.” It must have seemed like a good question to Harv, too, because he didn't try to answer it.

Klamath Falls sits by the southern tip of Upper Klamath Lake (Lower Klamath Lake is on the far side of the California line). Swarms of white pelicans floated in the lake and flew above it—when they did, they seemed nearly as big as a small aeroplane. They raised their chicks there. As soon as I saw 'em, I understood why the team we'd be playing was the Klamath Falls Pelicans.

Out in back of the motor lodge where we were staying, a bigfoot or sasquatch or whatever you wanted to call it was chopping a big oak log into firewood. The axe it swung could've cut off an elephant's head. No, not
it
. In spite of the long hair all over, that bigfoot was definitely
he
. His feet weren't the only big thing about him.

He stopped and stared at us when we got out of the bus. “Boy,” he said in a high, thin, piping voice that didn't go with his bulk, “you guys are almost as furry as I am! How'd that happen?”

“We're the House of Daniel.” Harv sounded calmer than I could have. “How'd it happen that you're here in town and not up in the mountains somewhere?”

“I love waffles,” the bigfoot said. “Pancakes, too, but waffles even more. You have no idea what a nuisance it is to make waffles in the woods. And whipped cream! Whipped cream is
impossible
! So I work in Klamath Falls and I get waffles at the diner.”

“You don't, uh, play baseball, do you?” Harv asked. Yeah, the sasquatch had a big strike zone. But if he ever got good wood on one, no ballpark would hold it. Lordy! No county would.

“Not me. I'm kinda slow,” he answered. “But Klamath Falls has a basketball team that hasn't lost for years.” He mimed dropping the ball in the basket. With hands that size, he could treat a basketball the way Carpetbag treated a baseball.

After we put on our uniforms and headed over to the ballpark, we saw a few more bigfoots going on about their business in Klamath Falls. I don't know whether they loved waffles, too, or if they had different reasons for coming to town. But they made themselves at home, and the ordinary people there took 'em in stride.

Pelicans Field was wooden, but pretty new and well kept up. It held maybe 2,500. The team played in a semipro league with the Medford Nuggets and other outfits from towns in southern Oregon and the northern chunk of California. A game with us was an extra payday for them, and a bigger one than they got most of the time.

While we were coming in from our warmups and they were going out, one of them said to me, “Hear you had some fun in Medford yesterday.”

“Fun?” I gave him a crooked grin. “Yeah, you could call it that.”

“What touched it off?” he asked.

“We pulled the hidden-ball trick in the bottom of the ninth, and the fella who got caught didn't much like it.”

His mouth fell open. “I bet he didn't! I've never seen anybody try that, let alone work it.”

I wondered if I should've kept quiet. Now we wouldn't be able to spring it here. But if he knew there'd been a dustup in Medford, somebody on the Pelicans probably already knew why. That was how it looked to me, anyway. And with a little luck, we wouldn't need it.

As the park filled up, I noticed it had a few extra-big boxes by the dugouts. The seats in 'em were extra big, too. And sure enough, three sasquatches sat down behind the Pelicans' dugout. Klamath Falls worked to help 'em fit in if they wanted to. Plenty of worse ways to go about things. In a bit, one of them went up to the concession stand and came back with three of the biggest mugs of beer you ever saw. I wouldn't have wanted to mess with a drunk bigfoot, but they didn't get drunk. They behaved better than most ordinary people. You could hear 'em, though. They all had those squeaky voices.

The Pelicans beat us, 4-3. They got a well-pitched game, and they made some good plays when their guy got in trouble. Wes pitched fine for us, too. It was one of those games where somebody had to lose, and that afternoon it was us. Not even Harv could get too upset about it. We didn't do anything wrong. We just didn't win.

When we went to a diner for supper, I almost ordered some gooey waffles. But I didn't. I had fried fish and French fries instead. I was cleaning my plate when Eddie said, “I wonder if the bigfoots who live in town have to pay taxes like everybody else.”

“If they do, it's the best reason I can think of for moving back to the woods.” Wes didn't like taxes. He liked the people who collected them even less.

“But then what would they do for waffles?” Fidgety Frank asked.

“And beer,” I said. “Don't forget beer.”

“I never forget beer,” Frank said seriously. “They sure could put it down, couldn't they?”

“They've got bigger boilers to fill up,” Wes said. “They didn't get out of line or anything.”

“Good thing they didn't,” I said. “I wouldn't want to try and make anything that size shut up, not unless I had some bigfoot cops with me. Even then, I'd like it more if they got out in front.”

“Me, too,” Eddie said. He was about as big as I was: not very, in other words. Most of the other guys on the team were taller or wider than the two of us, or taller and wider. Of course, put anybody from the House of Daniel alongside a sasquatch and he'd look nine years old, tops.

“We want to get an early start tomorrow,” Harv said. “Next game is down in Redding, against the Tigers, and it's a longish way. California, here we come, with our spikes and chewing gum!” Have I said before that Harv couldn't carry a tune if he had a pail to put it in? In case I haven't, he couldn't. That didn't stop him from trying, however much the rest of us wished it would have.