The Last Western (10 page)

“Oh no,” said Willie. “Clio is the only catcher I have.”

“You betcha,” said Mr. Ware.

“Fella,” added Mr. Cole.

In a few minutes Clio came out of Coach Gideon’s office.

“I signed,” he said to Willie.

“I will too,” said Willie. “Wait for me, Clio.”

“Congratulations,” the men said to Clio. “And welcome to the New York Hawks.” Willie went into the office.

“Sit down here at the desk,” said Coach Gideon. “Now Willie, this is the contract drawn up by the attorneys for Mr. Robert ‘Bob’ Regent. The contract gives you a bonus of $100,000 and a starting salary of $25,000. Frankly, it is one of the most generous offers I have ever had the privilege of working with.”

$100,000—Willie could not even imagine that amount of money. It was like trying to count the stars.

All he could think about was the washer and dryer he would buy his mother and a better bed for Cool Dawn. He had seen a beautiful flowered sofa in the front window of the Vincent de Paul Salvage Store. Maybe he could buy that too.

“Just sign here,” Coach Gideon said.

Willie signed.

“Congratulations, Willie,” said the Coach. “You’re in the big leagues now. May God go with you. More importantly, may you never forget the ideals that have been implanted here at George A. Custer Memorial High School.”

That night a storm broke over Houston, lashing the tenements of Willie’s neighborhood with the last cold rain of spring.

Out of the rain came Mr. Ware and Mr. Cole flashing their ruby baseball rings and glowing in their shiny dark blue suits.

“It’s a pleasure,” they said, meeting Willie’s mother, who had stayed home from work that night.

“A pleasure,” they said to Cool Dawn, who remained silent throughout their visit.

“On behalf of Mr. Robert ‘Bob’ Regent and the entire New York Hawks organization,” said Mr. Ware.

“May we present this check in the amount of $40,000?” said Mr. Cole.

Mr. Ware handed the check to Willie’s mother.

“I thought it was $100,000,” she said.

“Coach Gideon’s very nominal fee was $20,000,” said Mr. Ware.,

“Making Willie’s share $80,000,” said Mr. Cole.

“Then, it is a policy of the New York Hawks that recruits be paid one half their bonus the day they sign the contract, the other half the day they report to camp.”

“When is that?” said Willie’s mother.

“Tomorrow,” said Mr. Ware.

“Where?”

“Tucson,” said Mr. Cole.

After the men left, Willie looked at the check. That was his name all right, and those figures said $40,000. He turned the check over. He rubbed it. He fluttered it in the air.

Then he handed it to his mother.

“For you, mama,” he said. “You have worked too hard too long.”

Willie’s mother started to cry. Willie put his arms around her.

“Don’t cry, mama. I don’t know whether this is good for us or not but anyway it has happened. And maybe this money will help not just our family but others.”

Then Willie went downstairs to say good-bye to Carolyn.

He wanted to walk with her to the Richard M. Nixon Park, even if it was raining, to tell her what was in his heart, what had been growing there since the other night. But Flexer Sage was home that night and he detained Willie more than an hour talking about baseball.

They wound up with only a few minutes together on the landing and even there they weren’t alone. Carolyn’s youngest brother, Kiley, stood around, hero-worshipping the new big-leaguer.

“I guess now you know what you’ll be,” said Carolyn.

“I guess so.”

“And rich. Some people certainly get to the top fast.”

“Carolyn,” Willie began, trying to phrase the splendid words.

“Strike three!” said Kiley from the top of the stairs.

Willie, trying to smile, waved at the boy.

“The hero,” said Carolyn.

Silence.

In the shadows Willie could see her face, her black hair dark as the feather of a crow.

“Strike three!” Kiley cried.

“I—I’ll write, Carolyn.”

I’m going to lose him
, thought Carolyn miserably. But still she could not declare her need for him. It wasn’t awkwardness now or Sara Miro—he was going from them all, going away forever.

Tears suddenly came to her eyes.

“You do that,” she said. “You write.” She turned and ran up the stairs to the Sage flat, knocking her little brother against the wall.

Willie went up to Kiley and picked him up and carried him to the door of the flat. Willie knocked and Carolyn opened the door but all he could say, with Flexer Sage once more wanting to talk baseball, was “I’ll miss you.”

And all she could reply, with her family in the background all talking at once, was “Me too.”

Early the next morning a dark green Cadillac pulled up to the curb in front of the William McKinley Arms.

Willie, carrying all the clothes he possessed in a laundry bag, said good-bye to his mother and Cool Dawn.

They had just come back from Mass, and the peace of the trusted signs was with them still, giving them the courage for this farewell.

When he embraced his grandmother for the final time, he heard her whisper, “We must keep on learning,” and he felt his heart beat faster.

Then into the cold, strange air of the Cadillac where Clio sat huddled in silence, taking a last look at the street where he and Willie had grown up.

Now came
the days of the hard training and the difficult calisthenics under the hot Arizona sun, days of wearying sprint trials and push-ups, days of learning how to bunt, how to steal, how to slide; for Clio, days in the batting cage with the coaches showing him how to smooth his swing; for Willie, days of throwing and throwing and still more throwing as the manager, Mr. Thatcher Grayson, and the pitching coaches stood by, watching.

Mr. Grayson, a kindly man who took an immediate interest in the newcomers and who protected them against the sometimes rough kidding of their older teammates, worried that Willie would hurt his arm.

Mr. Grayson had once been a great pitcher himself. He had set many pitching records and might have set many more if he had not ruined his arm in a single season when he had been required to pitch too many games in too few days.

“Don’t force it, son,” he would call to Willie. “It is a natural pitch. Just let it be.”

Some of Mr. Grayson’s assistants were not as hopeful as the manager. They had seen many young, brilliant pitchers come along who had great renown in their hometowns, and they had seen those pitchers fail against the powerful hitters of the major leagues.

There was no denying Willie’s pitch was remarkable. Still, the coaches said, Willie had never faced major league batters. And, they said, no one could get along with only one pitch, even if it was a great pitch.

When Willie and Clio joined the club, the spring season was well under way. The Hawks had played the Chicago Cougars, the San Francisco Bears, the Minneapolis Lions, and now they were embarked upon a series with the St. Louis Wolves.

Willie and Clio had expected to get into the lineup right away. Instead, there was only the practice and the drill.

Even so, the life that had been suddenly opened up to them was like a gorgeous dream. Each day brought a new wonder to their lives. They had never eaten food like this before. They had never been in a place like the Windjammer El Dorado Deluxe Silver Moonbeam Motel where the Hawks were staying.

The beds are so beeutifull
, Willie wrote his mother and Cool Dawn.
Ther is ladies who come and make them up for you. Everything you need is rite here in the motell.

TV in every room
, Clio wrote his mother.

This is the place whar we staying, wrote Willie to Carolyn. It is grate, but still I would rather be home. How are You? Rite, will you? Sinserely. I hope you are ok. I think about You all day
. These last words were printed very carefully. Willie had chosen them slowly, like a man taking jewels out of a display case.

At night the music from the cocktail lounge floated up to their windows on the warm spring air.

There were beautiful tanned people in the lobby, handsome silver-haired men and girls in bright dresses wearing sunglasses. These beautiful beings stared at the players and pointed at them.

Everyone seemed to want to make the Hawks happy.

Then came a magical evening when the sun dived down with an unexpected swiftness leaving streaks of gold in the western sky, and Willie and Clio and all the players and coaches were taken by bus to the airfield.

There, gleaming in the golden glow of that still burning sky, was the plane, their plane.

And then they were borne up into the darkness, leaving the dry Christmas tree of Tucson behind and sweeping out in a curve over the Gulf of Mexico.

“Look at it!” Willie gasped.

Mr. Grayson nodded. “It is splendid from up here,” he said.

A little later the plane dropped down through the velvet darkness over Orlando, Florida and there the next afternoon,

Willie pitched his first major league ball game.

*  *  *

The Orlando Telenews
, in its lead story, reported the game as follows: ROOKIE FANS 27! MIRACLE BOY FROM TEXAS BAFFLES RAMS.

Orlando (April 1)
His name is Willie, and the fellow who catches for him is a high school classmate named Clio.

They are 18 years old.

This afternoon at Memorial Park before a jaded spring crowd of 5,500, they did what they’ve been doing back in Texas.

They set down 27 batters in a row, doing it by the old-fashioned method of the strikeout.

The heralded young pitcher accomplished the feat in an atmosphere of general cynicism that greeted his arrival in the Hawks camp two weeks ago.

Even on the club itself, rumor has it that certain of the coaches and some of the players consider the youngster’s miracle pitch a fluke, and one was reported to have said, “He won’t last out spring training.”

Yesterday the smiling Chinese-Indian-Negro—and he is reputedly all of these races—proved them all wrong.

And here the story switched to a film of the game.

That night, after the telenews, Willie went to Mr. Grayson’s room.

“Does the TV story mean some of the players don’t believe I can do it?”

Mr. Grayson said, “Does it matter what they believe, son? You and I know what you are and what you can do.”

Then Mr. Grayson reached into his jacket and held up a small battered black book that Willie had seen him reading in the dugout. Willie had supposed that this was Mr. Grayson’s player book, where he kept the batting averages and other information about the lineup.

But now he saw the book was titled
Vest Pocket Ezee Bible: Good Words for Bad Times
. The book was published by the Old Cowpoke Bible Society.

“Do you read the Bible, my son?”

“My grandma used to read it to me,” said Willie. “I don’t read good.”

“In this book,” Mr. Grayson said, “you will find all that you need to know—words of strength and consolation for times of doubt and trouble. Every player needs these words.”

Mr. Grayson opened the
Vest Pocket Ezee Bible
to the letter D, found Doubt and read a verse that said, “Cast thy care upon the Lord.”

“Do you cast your care upon the Lord, my boy?”

“I—I guess so,” said Willie. “When I have care to cast.”

Mr. Grayson said, “If we depend upon God and prayer and if we set a good example, then we triumph off the field as well as on.”

Then the old manager put his hand on Willie’s shoulder.

“But you are a good boy, I know. I ask only that you remain so.”

“Well, Mr. Grayson,” said Willie. “I’ll try. Good-night.”

I never knew pawm trees were so beeutifull
, Willie wrote home.

A week later in New Orleans, he pitched again. A great crowd had gathered for the game, and Willie and Clio were nervous, warming up.

“It’s on TV,” said Clio.

“Somebody said the owner is here.”

“I just hope I get a hit,” said Clio. He had failed to hit in the first game, and the batting coaches had been working with him all week.

“If the pitch is good, we won’t need many hits,” said Willie. “Besides only you can catch it.”

The game went like all the others until the third inning. Then, after Willie fanned the first two batters, his record was broken. A batter named Marks fouled the ball into the seats behind first. The crowd gave him a standing ovation. They were still applauding when he walked back to the dugout after striking out.

“What happened?” Mr. Grayson asked Willie.

“I must have given it too little,” Willie said.

“I was just joking, son,” Mr. Grayson said. “You struck him out.”

But again in the fifth, someone hit a ball—this time into the infield. It was easily handled, but now it had been proved Willie’s pitch could be hit.

Willie wound up striking out twenty-six and again he had pitched a no-hit game but the charm had been broken and that night he and Clio were quiet in their hotel room. A doubt had entered their minds.

Clio had struck out twice and popped to the infield his other two times at the plate, which added to their gloom.

They were stretched out on their beds trying to get interested in a television show when there was a tapping at the door as if someone might be hitting it with a stick.

“Come in,” said Willie.

In stepped the most magnificently dressed man they had ever seen—a man in a rich blue suit with flashes of a mysterious and elusive red, a handsome man with gray hair and a smiling, wonderfully carefree face that seemed to announce, “You’re wonderful, life is wonderful, everything is wonderful!”

He carried a cane of some dark red hue, this man, and he held it now with an upturned arm, like a magician on stage. His other hand swept out toward the boys.

“Willie—Clio,” he called in a melodious baritone voice, making their names sound like a song. “Welcome to the Hawks! Welcome to New Orleans! I am Robert ‘Bob’ Regent, your owner!”

The boys sprang from their beds.

“Mr. Regent,” Willie started to say, but Mr. Robert ‘Bob’ Regent held out a forbidding hand.