Departures (25 page)

I had a few myself but having started on corn squeezins no store-bought whiskey can shift me which I know you will understand. I was takin Lazlo back to our Pullman when who shd we run into but Gyoola. My roomie like to spit in his eye. He rears back and comes out with Do you know what kind of unnatural monster your son is?

Your drunk says Gyoola which was true & Your crazy which I did not think too far off either. But Lazlo goes Crazy am I & shouts something in that furrin tongue o theirs. Gyoola gapes at him like a new-caut fish & says You are crazy sharper this time. But Lazlo comes back in that old country lingo & pretty soon they was slangin each other for all they was worth if the noise ment anything. I wish I knew what they was sayin cause it sounded lively.

Then Lazlo ups & swings on him which proves Gyoola was rite on account of Gyoola would make 3 of him. I give him credit Gyoola didnt swing back he is a gentleman. I got my arms round my roomie at last & hauled him to bed.

By the time he was in the bunk he got the upper this trip he had went from fightin drunk to cryin drunk carryin on about
how Gyoola is a fine fellow but deseeved & changelings & I dont know what all. His yarns what I could make out of em is wilder than anything I ever heered old Jacob tell who was a slave before the States War.

Well when I climed into the lower they was somethin in the bed with me. I thot it was roaches but it was cloves of garlic I found when I pulled one out. I says How did this get here and Lazlo answers back I put em there & you leave em. I want no truck with your heathen superstishun I says & do you know what he does next? He hands me down a crucifix like the Papists use & says Take this then. Thank you I will keep the garlic I tell him & he shuts up.

More of the team is down with whatever it is Del has. If it hadnt come on so sudden Id call it hookworm. They are all washed out & listless like people with the worm suckin on em. But I heered somewheres the yankee parts o the country dont have hookworm so it cant be that.

It is a terrible thing to happen to us because with Ty and Wahoo Sam and the rest the Tigers whale the ball against the best of teams & how are we supposed to stay with em with half the players sick & the rest draggin? If we lose they will blame the pitchers they always do.

P.S.—Got your telegram in New York. I am glad to hear Sally says she is proud of me.

Dear Willie,

I am commencing to wonder if maybe I am the crazy one & not Laszlo after all. It is on account of what I seen or rather didnt see in the hotel this morning. It is a fine place much fancier than the ones we stayed at in Boston or New York. One wall of the lobby is a mirror I suppose to make it seem bigger then it is not that it needs to because it dont.

We come in erly in the morning draggin our tails some because tho you can sleep in a Pullman its not near as good as a bed. Players & reporters & such was mingled with porters totin our bags & a few o what the Reverend would call scarlet wimmin. You neednt mention them last to Ma or Sally either.

Anyways to make a long story short while we was all checkin in & the clerks was yellin for bellhops & the like I happen to
look round in the mirror to see if my new Panama which you must see was strait on my head. It was but what should I spy in the glass but a little boys suit without a little boy in it if you take my meaning. There was nothin like that in our crowd only Zoltan smiling at me. His teeth is uncommon white & long & sharp. Like I say he was smilin but not real frendly like I didnt think.

I says If that dont beat all & point out what I seen to Laslo who was standing by me cause were roomies as you recollect. And he looks too & dam me if his eyes dont near roll back in his head. But when he catches Zoltan lookin our way he makes out like everything is alrite. Hes good. Remember me not to play poker against him.

Nobody else seemed to notice nothin amiss.

When we was up in our room Laslo rounds on me & says this is the last proof now do you see what sort of feind it is? It is a vampire. What on earth is that I ask & he tells me more then I bargined for. Seems this vampire crechur is a kind o blood-suckin hant the bohunks has which ifn you fail to kill itll leech a man to death.

We got to kill it Laslo says all rile up. I says Well that may be a good idear but how do you aim to go about it? It dont sound easy from what he says & I know from old Jacob as how hants is never easy to be rid of. But bein a bohunk hisself Laslo has a skeme which may work.

I hope so. The Browns is ragged enuf with all the blood in em & purely hopeless without. The Tigers done trounced us today & look like doin it again tomorrow. We had 3 reglars out o the lineup. This has got to stop so I am with Laslo all the way tho there is likely to be some risk. But no hant is a match for a good Southern man. I will tell you how we done in my next letter.

P.S.—If it goes rong give the picture of me in uniform to Sally to remember me by. Dont read this part to Ma. The more I think the scareder I get.

Dear Willie,

The Lord be praised the deed is like they say done. Laszlo and I is well tho the thing turned out much more tighter than either one of us reckoned it wld. What we done was take down
all the garlic & other heathen charms Laszlo been usin to keep the hant away & the crucifix too & wait for it or rather Zoltan I mean to pay us a call. Nite before last he didnt either on account of he suspected a snare or because he was eatin somewheres else. The whole team is so peaked these days I couldnt cipher out which ones was fed on last.

Well we left the hoodoos down again last nite & sat up waiting for whatever was going to happen. We did not want to be caut napping for sure! As we had done this the nite before too & slept a little of the day, I confess I was yawnin.

Then lookin out the winder I seen the bat what had been seen round before. I reckon thats what it was anyways for it seen me too & flied closer. I just had time to give Laszlo the sign & let him get out of sight longside the winder afore it come up.

I dont quite know how to tell what happened next. I was lookin into its eyes & its like I heered a voice in my head saying Let me in let me in. And I couldnt of said No even if I wanted to which at the time I didnt. That vampire hant charmed me with them red opticks of it’s just like a snake charmin a bird down out of a tree for it to swaller.

Laszlo said after I was like a machine when I up and opened the winder. I dont hardly recollect one way or the other. All I remember is them eyes. In my head I heered that voice again Give me your neck it was sayin. & I twisted my chin to one side like a shote which dont know its about to be slaughtered.

Then its like there was a scream only it werent a noise at all only in between my ears. Laszlo had sprang out from where he was hidin & landed the hant a smart one with his crucifix. We didnt know what that would do neither him or me but we found out right quick. They was a thump a real one this time & insted of the bat at my neck there was Zoltan on the floor naked as the day he was born only I reckon he werent born at all when you think about it.

He was still part hant tho. I had thunk his teeth was long before well now he had a set the bobcat we ketched last winter would of been proud of. He was smilin like a wild crechur & I got to tell you them eyes still dragged at me somethin fierce.

Not at Laszlo. I reckon the cross saved him. Maybe them Catholics is not as rong as we think. Anyways he hauls out a railroad spike & slams it into Zoltan’s chest. I heard that shreek again in my mind & I reckon in Laszlo’s too on account of his hands was shakin but he did not let go. He shoved that spike in harder & deeper.

Zoltan’s mouth was open so wide I thot itd go clean round to the back of his head. I was moving like a man in a dream still but when Laszlo cussed at me I done the last thing we planned out which was fling a whole garlic down his I mean Zoltan’s trap. I dont know if that shifted him or the spike but then he give a last riggle & his eyes well if they was lamps youd say they was blowed out. All a sudden I was alrite again.

Laszlo and me the both of us yelled then on account of it wasnt no little boy on the spike any more but a bat the same size Zoltan had been & just as dead too. & then the bat melted away like snow in a thaw & there was nothin on the rug excepting the spike which Laszlo had dropped and the garlic.

So its done I reckon. I wish I cld sleep for a week but we got a game tomorrow. I bet we whup em too.

Dear Willie,

Well whup em we didnt I am afraid. The Tigers they is a good team & that
Ty
runs & hits like a madman & you cant pitch around him either or Sam or Bobby will kill you if he dont. So we lost again.

But the boys which was most bloodsucked are looking better & so I have no douts things will get better soon. & heres a funny thing. Nobody remembers nothin about Zoltan & what he was doing to em but for me and Lazslo.

Come to that nobody remember nothin about Zoltan at all. Laszlo & me we run into Gyula at breakfast & was not sure what to say or nothin. Finally Lazslo asks him Hows your son & he looks at my roomie like he was off his head & says I aint got no son nor never did. Lazslo & me look at each other & press it no farther I can tell you.

& you remember how Zoltan was in the dugout with us and all? Well his little uniform is plumb disappeared & nobody knows where it has gone nor misses it neither. When I asks the mgr What become o the batboy he gives me the same look Gyula done gave Lazslo & says This team aint never had no batboy.

Thats what you think I says But dont worry he done flied out for the last time. & I laughs & laughs even tho hes reamin me
up one side & down the other. Sometimes there aint no point in tellin people things anyhow is all I can say.

THE TRAIN PULLED TO A STOP. “RICHMOND
!” the conductor shouted. “All out for Richmond!” The man in the long gray coat with the brass buttons slowly got to his feet, made his way down the aisle. A porter walked behind him with his bags. People waited respectfully until he had passed, then began filing out after him.

The conductor touched a finger to the brim of his cap in salute. “Watch your step as you get out, General. Let me give you a hand, suh.”

John Houston Thorpe waved away the offered assistance. “If I can’t manage a couple of steps, young fellow, you may as well bury me. And I’m no general. I’m proud I was a captain, and I’ve never claimed anything more.”

Taking some of his weight on his stick, he descended from the passenger car without difficulty. Richmond in June was warm and muggy, but so was Rocky Mount, North Carolina, from which he’d come. The weather was not what made his shoulders sag for a moment; it was the weight of the past.

He’d come through Richmond in 1863 with the rest of the Forty-seventh North Carolina, hot and eager to join Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the great invasion of the North that would set the Confederacy free forever. He’d been dapper and handsome, with slicked-down black hair and a thin little mustache of which he’d been inordinately proud.

Now—how had sixty-nine years slid by? Inside, he felt like a dashing youth still. The body that moved only slowly, the thick spectacles, the gnarled hand he often cupped behind one ear—
were they truly his? Surely it was the world that had changed, not himself.

A flashbulb exploded in front of his face, filling his vision with purple spots. No flashbulbs when he’d been here before; in those days, having a photograph taken meant standing solemn and statue-still until the long exposure ended. He nodded. Yes, it was the world that had changed.

“Welcome to Richmond, General!” the fellow behind the flash camera shouted. “Have you come here other times since the end of the war?”

“Never once,” Thorpe answered with a sort of pride. “But now, I thought, if I don’t come now—when shall I have another chance?”

“What do you think of the city, General?” the man asked.

As his eyes cleared, Thorpe saw the fellow had a
PRESS
tag tucked into his hatband—a reporter, then. “I’m no general,” he repeated, a bit testily: a reporter was supposed to know such things. “What do I think of Richmond? I’ve not seen much yet, but it strikes me as a big city. Of course, it did that a while ago, too.”

The laugh that once rang musically was now a rusty croak, but he loosed it all the same. When he’d first come north to Richmond, not a town in North Carolina had held as many as five thousand inhabitants; no wonder the Confederate capital, then near forty thousand, seemed to him a metropolis swollen past belief. These days Rocky Mount was on its way to being a city of the size Richmond had been then. He wondered why he failed to find it large. Perhaps because he and Rocky Mount had grown together. But his town had grown up, while he … somehow he had just grown old.

From behind him, the porter said, “You come on with me, suh. I’ll take you to the cab stand.” The colored man picked up his suitcases again and raised his voice: “Make way fo’ the general here! Make way, folks!”

And people
did
clear a path. Following in the porter’s wake, Thorpe reflected that the illegitimate promotion people insisted on foisting on him was worth something, at any rate, if it got him through the crowded train station so easily. He laughed again.