The House of Daniel (48 page)

I felt as though I didn't need a carpet to float back to the motor lodge eight or ten feet above the street. Good thing I didn't try it, though, or a car would've taught me different in a hurry.

A bunch of the guys were gathered together when I came back. After a little bit, I noticed that one of the long-haired, bearded men wasn't anybody I knew. About the same time, they noticed I was there.

“Hey, Snake,” Harv said. “Got somebody here you need to meet.” He nodded to the stranger. “This is Rabbit O'Leary. Rabbit, this here's Snake Spivey.”

 

(XXI)

We shook hands. “Good to see you back,” I said, for all the world as if I didn't feel a goose walking on my grave. “How you doing?”

“I still get headaches,” he answered with a shrug. “I don't remember running into Double-Double. From what the docs say, I probably never will. I woke up a little when they were carrying me off—”

“I saw you wave,” I said. “I was there.”

“Yeah, that's what the guys were telling me. I passed out again pretty soon, though. Next time I came to was quite a while later, in the Ponca City hospital.”

“How's Double-Double coming along?” I asked.

“He still needs one crutch or a cane to get around,” Rabbit said. “Maybe he'll heal up all the way and maybe he won't. He'll be able to walk—the doctors are sure of that. They still don't know if he'll be able to run fast again.”

“You guys smashed into each other like two trains on the same track,” I said. “It was horrible.”

Harv set a hand on my shoulder. “Snake, you and me need to talk.”

“Okey-doke,” I said. The goose's footfalls felt heavier. If he was gonna cut me loose, this was how he'd go about it. But you don't let on you care about anything like that, the same way you don't show a pitcher he's hurt you even if he just bounced a fastball off your elbow.

He took me aside a few steps. The rest of the guys drew back to give us room. Some of them would have had managers tell them things like that. The ones who hadn't, would. Baseball isn't forever. It's only as long as you're good enough. The old PCL guys on the semipro teams could testify to that.

Harv said, “Snake, for now I'm gonna leave you in center and put Rabbit in right. That'll let Frank and Wes concentrate on their pitching and not have to play the outfield part-time. In a while, though, I may move Rabbit back to center and shift you over to right—see if we're better that way. Suit you?”

I gaped at him. I'd been so sure the news was gonna be bad, I could hardly make sense of it when I found out it wasn't. Even though Rabbit was back, Harv didn't want to throw me on the street. No matter that he was a guy, and a shaggy guy at that—I almost kissed him.

You don't let on when you're happy, either.
Wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful
. I took a deep breath. “However you want to do it, Harv, it's fine by me,” I answered.

“I was sure you'd say that, Snake, but I didn't want to catch you unawares or anything,” Harv said. Harv was a good manager all kinds of ways.

“Thanks,” I told him. “Thanks a lot.” That was twice in just a few minutes that I'd said it and really meant it. I patted my jacket, right above where I'd stashed Mich Carstairs's address.

“Sure,” he said. Maybe he didn't know how relieved I was. He went on, “Now—are we gonna knock the scales off those Sand Dabs this afternoon?”

“Uh-huh.” To tell you the truth, I'd almost forgotten about the game.

“Oh. One other thing,” Harv said. “I'm gonna give number fourteen back to Rabbit, if you don't mind. Got any other number you want?”

“Whatever you have that'll fit me,” I said. I didn't care at all. As long as the shirt had a lion embroidered on the front, the number on the back didn't matter for beans. Some guys got fussy about that kind of thing. I didn't.

So I wore 23 on my back against the Redondo Beach Sand Dabs. The shirt was on the baggy side, but that didn't matter, either. It was a House of Daniel shirt.
That
mattered.

The Sand Dabs looked and talked as though they were mostly fishermen. They were tan, with sun-bleached hair, and they swore even worse than pro ballplayers. They were bigger guys than the Pickers, but I'd bet on the Pickers every time. Those Japs had forgotten more about defense and teamwork than the Sand Dabs ever learned.

We had another good crowd, a full house or close to it. It was a different crowd from the day before, though. There were some Orientals in the seats, but a lot fewer than had come out for their own kind. Whites made up for it, whether from Gardena or that Redondo Beach place I couldn't say. Nothing wrong with any of that. I did think it was interesting, though.

I had my head in the stands more than I usually do. I hoped I'd spot Mich coming out to watch me play. Nope. Maybe she couldn't get the afternoon off. Maybe she didn't care about baseball. Or maybe she didn't care that much about me but was just being polite at J. N. Hill's.

I can't tell you how good having a real outfielder in right felt. Fidgety Frank and Wes could throw, of course, and a right fielder needs to be able to do that. But they were both slow out there, and Frank didn't hit much. Rabbit made the team better with the glove. His first time up, he ripped a double into the right-field corner. He didn't have much rust to knock off.

We beat the Sand Dabs 11-3, I think it was. Their manager shook his head when he came up to Harv. “They said you were good,” he said as they shook hands. “They knew what they were talking about, I guess. You could've made it look even worse than it does.”

“Can't tell much from any one game.” Harv stayed polite. They hadn't done anything to tick him off.

“Nice of you to say so,” the Sand Dabs' boss said. He had sun-furrows on his forehead and cheeks. His eyebrows were paler than his leathery skin. “No matter what you say, though, we were welterweights up against a top big man.”

I'm sure Harv answered him, but I have no idea what he said. I did spot Mich then, still in the white blouse that said J. N. HILL'S. She was heading for the way out, but looking back at the field. I waved to her. She waved, too, but she kept going.

“Got a girl here, do you?” Rabbit said.

“I'd met her before, back in Oklahoma. We happened to bump into each other again this morning.” That was all true, even if it left out most of what livened up the story. I could say more later if I felt like it, but I didn't have to.

“Lucky you. She's pretty.” He couldn't have got more than a glimpse of her. Well, so what? Ballplayers notice good-looking women. Good-looking women notice ballplayers, too, but not so often. Still and all, we do all right for ourselves.

*   *   *

There are so many places to play ball in Southern California, I started losing track of them. We went up the coast to Santa Barbara and Ventura and Oxnard. We played in Pasadena, which was about as snooty as a town could get when it hadn't been there all that long. We went inland to San Bernardino and Riverside. I don't think they were as hot as Fresno, but they came close.

We went one county south to towns like Santa Ana and Fullerton and Anaheim. On the way there and back, I saw more orange and lemon trees than I ever had before. They call it Orange County, and it's got a little city named Orange in it, too.

And we went farther south, all the way to San Diego by the Mexican border. San Diego was a good-sized town: bigger than Spokane or Tacoma, for instance. But it didn't have a pro team then. Semipros and barnstormers played at Navy Field—San Diego's a big Navy town—or at Balboa Stadium in Balboa Park.

We took on a team of San Diego all-stars at Balboa Stadium. It was right next to their zoo. That was top-drawer: the snake house even had a baby dragon in it. He was something to see, all right. They made sure you stayed back far enough so he couldn't singe you when he spat fire. He wasn't much bigger than my arm. I don't know what they'll do when he grows up. His range will get longer. They can take their time figuring it out, though. The sign by the enclosure said dragons live hundreds of years.

That all-star team had its own baby dragon. The guy playing right for them was so young, it was ridiculous. Sixteen, tops—I'd be amazed if a razor ever touched those cheeks. He was skinny as a splinter. You could drop him down a soda straw and he'd never touch the sides.

“Hey, kid!” Wes called, watching him shag flies. “Does your mommy know you're here?”

He said something about Wes's mother that would've made one of those Navy men in San Diego turn puce. “Punk's not real smart, is he?” Rabbit said. “Five gets you ten Wes plunks him his first time up.”

“I won't touch that,” I said. I knew Wes, too.

The kid was hitting third for the All Stars. That should've told us something right there. He batted left. He came up with one out and a man on first base in the bottom of the first. Sure as the demon, Wes's first fastball spun his cap. He got up, dusted himself off, and climbed in again. “Is that all ya got, you old fart?” he yelled.

The next one would've played xylophone music on his ribs, but he twisted out of its way, too. Dunno how—Wes meant for it to get him. He sent some more compliments out to the mound.

Wes threw him a nasty curve on the inside corner.
Crack!
As soon as the kid swung the bat, he didn't look sixteen any more. He uncoiled faster than one of the snakes in the zoo. The line drive split the gap between Rabbit and me. By the time we ran it down, the kid loped into third. He was laughing his behind off.

He singled his next time up. Time after that, Wes
did
hit him. He went down to first cussing a blue streak. When he came up again, there were All Stars on first and second, so Wes had to pitch to him. The kid worked the count to two balls and a strike. Then he hit another one. I went back a few steps, but it was over my head and over the fence. Wes threw his glove ten feet in the air.

The kid came up one more time, in the bottom of the eighth. Wes gave him nothing good, and he tossed away his bat and took his walk. Thanks mostly to him, the All Stars beat us, 5-3. A kid, yeah. A splinter, yeah, but a splendid one.

He turned pro before his eighteenth birthday. By then, San Diego'd joined the PCL. A season and a half for the Friars, and the Boston Golden Cods bought his contract. They shipped him to Minneapolis. He tore up the American Association for the Mooses, too. Now he's smacking line drives all over the Fens. The way he swings the bat, he may keep doing it for the next twenty years.

You know what, though? From everything I hear, he's still a first-class son of a bitch. Not that his billfold cares.

Back then, what Wes said was, “That guy'll go far—if somebody doesn't kill him first.” That was about the size of it. No one has yet, and the kid's still going.

But we kept coming back to Los Angeles. The Seraphs won the PCL pennant that year by thirty-five and a half games. I know the Coast League plays a long season. That's still preposterous. They split the season, winner of the first half playing against the winner of the second for the league title. Since the Seraphs walked away with both halves, they had a best-of-seven series against the top players from the rest of the league. They took that in six.

After the playoffs finished, the barnstorming teams from back East and up the coast started coming to town. We played a few games in Weeghman Park ourselves then. No, we didn't go back to Chicago. Los Angeles has a Weeghman Park, too. The Seraphs are a farm team for the Square Bears (sometimes people call 'em the Cubes for short), which is how that happened.

Weeghman Park—Los Angeles's, I mean—though, now
that's
a ballyard! They say it's the best minor-league park in the country. For once, I think they're right. It holds twenty thousand, and it's double-decked.

It did have its quirks. It went 340 down the left-field line, 339 down the line in right, and 412 to center. That sounds like a fair-sized field, doesn't it? Well, it was only 345 to right-center and left-center. They put bleachers back of the right-field fence, which cut the place down there. The fence in left ran along the street. So what would've been ordinary fly balls in most places went out of that one.

Still, if you spent most of your time going from a beat-up wooden park with benches that put slivers in your butt to a high-school field fenced off with chain-link, the way the House of Daniel did, that two-decked grandstand with the tall white clock tower sticking up behind it was something to see.

“Guys in the bigs can't have it
much
better'n this,” Eddie said. I figured he was right. The clubhouses had lockers in 'em, not just nails, and they had room to turn around. If you'd seen some of the places that called themselves clubhouses that I had, you'd know how great that seemed.

And I'll tell you what else seemed great. The House of Daniel couldn't play at Weeghman every day. Too many other hot teams were in town. A lot of the time, we'd stay at that motor lodge by Todd Field in Gardena. When we did play at the fancy park, we'd ride the trolley up. Transfer to the S line, and it dropped you right by that clock tower (which was also a memorial to the men who died in the War to End War).

When we didn't play at Weeghman Park, we'd have a game in Gardena or Torrance or at Shell Field or Recreation Park in Long Beach or up in Pasadena or wherever Harv could promote one. And because we stayed right there so much of the time, I had a fine chance to spark Mich Carstairs.

*   *   *

Back in Enid, Mich wouldn't have looked at me twice. Hey, let's not kid ourselves. Back in Enid, she wouldn't have looked at me once. Her brother ran one of the biggest businesses in town, a business that kept going strong even after the Big Bubble popped. Me? I was a drunkard's boy, the kind of guy no respectable girl wanted anything to do with.