Sophomore Campaign (11 page)

The preposterousness of the plan suddenly revealed itself to Murph, who sadly, reluctantly, turned away. He lowered his head and kicked at some splintered shards of timber. The sense of energy and opportunity that had possessed him ever since his last conversation with Dennison drained from his face as if someone had just pulled a plug. “Come on, Mick,” he called. “We need to be leaving now.”

The two of them walked past the gate, with Mickey turning around after every other step to see if Milo was following. Murph's legs seemed much heavier than before, and grew heavier still each time Mickey asked him why Lester was not coming with them.

“I don't know, Mick,” he said, his face awash with inarticulate despair. “I told you already, three times, I don't know.”

As they approached the road, the seemingly endless consequences of his failure unraveled in front of him, as did the phantom image of Dennison's smirking face. He knew he needed to get home. He opened the car door for Mickey, but stopped suddenly before getting in himself.

“Do ya really think I'm good enough?” Lester called after him.

Murph smiled and stuck his right thumb in the air.

“I mean, not that I'm saying yes or nothin',” Lester continued as he came closer, “but if this has any chance of workin', I has got to be sure I'm good enough. Damn good.”

Murph smiled again. From several feet away, he saw that the boy was now completely exposed. There was no hidden meaning or innuendo in what he said. The words themselves were enough to tell the story brewing behind the young man's eyes.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” he said, holding up a pearly white baseball he pulled from his jacket pocket. “Let's see for ourselves.”

Murph fiddled around in the trunk of his car, then walked past the gate again and found a good spot. Then he proceeded to march off sixty feet, six inches. Just the thought of Mickey and Lester being teamed as a battery filled him with an excitement that the actual tossing back and forth raised to some ecstatic triumph. He watched from the side, and could not help but smile yet again with glorious satisfaction and anticipation as Mickey popped Lester's glove with every delivery while Lester was more than happy to return the favor with each toss back. The rhythmic thumping was music to Murph's ears.

“You guys were made for each other,” Murph gushed, his heart now fully dilated. “It's beautiful. What a tandem!”

Lester smiled at the possibility of such a thought.

“Now what do ya say you hit a few for me too?” Murph asked. “I think Mickey's loose.” In a mellow light, with only Mickey, Murph and a bevy of nature's creatures for an audience, Lester proceeded to light up the morning sky with long, arching blasts that streaked the pale blue ceiling, each climbing higher and higher as if ascending an invisible ladder before landing unceremoniously in the woods some 400 feet beyond the mill.

“That's four fastballs and four dingers, Lester,” Murph said from his crouch behind the fledgling slugger. “Of course, Mickey ain't throwing his hardest, on account he'd probably kill me if he did. But not bad kid. Not bad at all.” The energized manager pounded his glove feverishly.

“Okay, Mick, just a couple more now,” he called out to the mound. “You're game, Lester, right?”

“For sure,” he said. “Beats the heck out of cutting and stacking them logs.” With another baseball now safely in his hands, Mickey plotted his next pitch. Murph had told him before they began to take it easy—“not too hard; just move the ball around a little” were his exact words. Mickey had done just that, and was ruminating over what he should offer next when Murph put down two fingers in between his knees.

“But, Mr. Murphy, I thought you said to—”

“It's okay, Mick,” Murph reassured. “No big deal. Just do as your told.”

Now, with the sunshine sprinkling through the slanted limbs of ancient oaks, Mickey turned the baseball in his glove, his fingers reading the laces as if they were stitched for the purpose of delivering some unknown story scribed in brail.
Yellow hammer
, he thought, his mind turning and feeling among his recent memory of baseball jargon he had been taught to describe things he scarcely understood.
Murph wants a curveball
.
I can do that. Sure. But we had a plan. ‘Not too hard. Just move the ball around a little.' He didn't mention nothing about a yellow hammer. And why don't he just say curveball? Why yellow hammer? Or Uncle Charlie or yacker? And why two fingers? Why is a fastball one finger and a curveball two? Hammers aren't yellow anyway. Bananas are yellow. So are chicks and corn. But I've never seen a yellow hammer. Pa had a red one. And a green screwdriver. But never a yellow
hammer. And even if they was yellow, what has a hammer got to do with pitching a baseball?

Mickey floated into an abyss of cerebration, his mind turning and roving in desultory circles from thought to thought until the insular meandering was shattered by Murph's voice.

“Mickey, let's go son! You know what to do now, right, kid?” His game sense now roused, Mickey returned and nodded in Murph's direction. He gripped the ball, just as he had been taught, began his motion, and with the morning light falling heavily on his furrowed brow, he reached back, curled his wrist, and broke off a beautiful curveball that tumbled across the makeshift plate and into Murph's glove like it had been dropped from an invisible ledge. Lester had watched the ball the entire way, his eyes two brown saucers wedded to the whirling white sphere, certain his bat was destined to strike the ball on the fleshy part. He swung virulently, with a trembling sense of expectation that engendered nothing but a sudden rush of air and an awkward buckling of the stunned batter's knees.

“Now what in tarnation was that?' Lester complained to Mickey. Then he turned to Murph with a sheepish smile.

“That ain't fair.” All three figures flashed in the sunlight.

“Just keeping you honest, slugger,” Murph said winking. “Don't want you thinking it's that easy. But no worries. You ain't the first to come up with nothing but air. Nobody can touch that pitch.”

“I sure am glad I won't have to,” Lester said, shaking his head. “Am sure glad this here boy's on our side.”

“We're all on your side, Lester,” Murph said. “I'll get the paperwork to you tonight—no windfall attached to it, but it's more money that you are making now—and you can stay with us if you like as well. It's closer to Borchert Field and it will give you and Mickey a chance to get to know each other really well.”

Two days later, before Murph introduced Lester to the team, he sat down in his tiny office with Boxcar. They sat for a while, inanimate as the row of trophies displayed behind Murph's desk, just looking at each other, a tacit uneasiness hovering between them. Boxcar was pale and there were shadows under his eyes.

“I don't know why you're looking at me that way,” Boxcar said with modulations of pride. “I ain't some charity case.”

“Come on, Box. You know me better than that. I have nothing but respect for you. Always have. But we need to—”

“Talk, right? Is that what you were gonna say?” “Look, Box, I don't like this anymore than you do. Neither of us asked for this.”

“You don't have to worry, Murph,” he said, leaning back and folding his arms tightly to his chest. “I know what's happening here. Dennison's riding you about me. I'm not stupid. Been around long enough to know you're only as good as your last game.”

“Listen, nobody's saying that you're done here, Boxcar. Nobody. It's just that maybe it would be better, for you too, if you just took it easy for a while. Just until you're feeling strong again. You're welcome to stay with the team. And when you're ready to come back, your spot will be waiting for you.”

Boxcar laughed uncomfortably. He leaned forward and grabbed a picture frame off Murph's desk, fingering a photograph with trembling hands of him and Mickey. Then he began to talk about Murph's design.

“So you think Baker can handle the load? I mean, he's still sort of green.”

Murph frowned. Something anomalous in the question arrested him.

“Baker ain't the one I had in mind,” he replied.

Boxcar looked at him quizzically.

“I just signed a real stud. Plays for the Bears. You'd like him, Box. Tough kid who can knock the cover off the ball.”

A momentary flush passed over Boxcar's face. “The Bears?” he asked incredulously. “From the Negro National League?”

“Yup. He'll be with us for the next game.”

A veil of awe stole over the wounded backstop as he gazed blankly into Murph's eyes. “You're replacing me… with a negro? Are you kiddin' me Murph? That's what you think of me? Jesus Christ! After all we've been through. And what about the fans? Huh? Have you thought about that? Do you really believe this is going to fly with them?”

“Look, Box, I don't expect you to understand. I know you're upset and all. This has nothing to do with you. But you have to trust me. This kid is the real deal. I've seen him. He's legit. He can really help us now. Forget his color and all that stuff. He's a perfect fit for this team.”

“Perfect fit? Are you out of your mind? You think these guys are gonna want to share a field, and a locker room, with some no name colored boy from the sticks? Come on, Murph. You're better than that.” All around Murph swirled an unpleasant air of admonition.

“He's a guy, Boxcar. Just a regular guy. I'm surprised at you. Of all people. Who cares what color he is? If he makes us better, and can help us win, who really cares? He's just a another damn ballplayer. Puts his spikes on just like we do. And I'll tell ya something else. You would like him. Mickey's met him already and loves him. Can't stop talking about him.”

“Mickey is simple, Murph,” Boxcar shot back. “A child who doesn't know nothin' about the world and the way things work.” Murph's blood was roused. His nostrils flared and the skin around
his cheeks tightened. Boxcar was at a loss to handle the rush of exposure he suddenly felt.

“You know what I mean, Murph,” he said painfully. His mouth was twisted, as though he were struggling with something inside of it, and his face remained slightly averted, as if to ward off the palpable feeling of change that was all around them. The conditions and unspoken truth that had governed their lives previously were now gone forever.

“With or without your stamp of approval,” Murph went on, “I am walking in to that locker room and introducing him to the guys. He's playing with us, Box. Now I'd rather do it with you, but you can go if you like. It's your choice. And nobody will judge you. But this is
my
decision. And like it or not, I've made it.”

Moments later, in a semiconscious stupor engendered by unconscious thoughts that had only just recently found a voice, Murph addressed the team. The formal announcement was not much of an announcement at all, for everyone had already heard the rumors and rumblings. But with the announcement came an old, familiar madness and resistance.

“What the hell is he thinking?” Danvers carped. “This is Boxcar's replacement? Is he for real?”

Others grumbled as well, not with the same pugilistic intent as Danvers, but out of fear and frustration and uncertainty. The room all at once became a cavernous tomb, filled with bodies that featured slumping shoulders and drooping heads. Murph, aware that most disorders of the mind and soul could be read clearly in the state one's physical affect, tried to assuage the unrest.

“Look, fellas, we are in a tight spot here. Losing Boxcar is a tremendous hit. I know that. And he would have been here today, if he were feeling better. I don't know. Maybe that would have helped. But with or without him, we have to get on with things. Sure, it
may not be easy. I know that. But Lester here has agreed to help us out. And just as I stood before all of you last season, with Mickey, and asked for your confidence and patience and loyalty, I am asking again. Different is not the same as bad. I think we know that now. We are better than most people. We have proven that. So what I think is that we can make this work.” The grumbling grew stronger and assumed a more definitive shape.

“I don't think this is good, Woody,” Finster whispered. “It don't feel right. How can this possibly work?”

“Work?” Woody repeated. “How can it work? Simple. It can't. It won't work. Not now. Not ten years from now. Not ever. I'll bet anything it blows up right in Murph's face.”

Others caught wind of Woody's rant and began grumbling again themselves—a low, insidious murmur that vibrated ominously off the concrete walls. Lester watched, along with Murph, as the room slowly morphed into a contagion of irrepressible anger and frustration. Lester, tender of heart but tough of constitution, felt the animosity but stood tall, equally ready for acceptance or a full-fledged attack. He smiled faintly, strangely, and buried his sweaty hands deep in his pockets. Then he spoke.

“I would, uh, just like to say that I ain't here to take no one's place. No, sir. I play ball too. Know what it means to be loyal to teammates. Hell, I ain't Raymond—uh, Boxcar. Never claimed to be. But he ain't me neither. I'm just a guy—like all of you here—who wants to play ball. I play hard and I will play hard for you too.” Lester's voice strained with trepidation. His eyes, glassy now with emotion, sagged a bit as they scanned the patchwork of wooden faces that had all but dismissed anything he had to say. Murph sighed quietly. He knew that talk was cheap. In order to quell any misgivings, the group would just have to see for themselves how talented Lester was. The proof, as Matheson said, would be in the pudding.

“Okay, fellas,” he interjected, disrupting the uncomfortable silence. “I guess that's it. If nobody has anything else, I'll see you all on the field.”