I don’t know what it was that night, but one beer and I was high. Two and I was floating on air. Laughing, giggling, even. The other guys were looking at me strange.
I was thinking I had to calm down when there was a sound behind me and a voice said, “Jeez, Johnson, you stunk worse than day-old turds today.”
Now, I don’t know if you ever watch those slasher movies on cable TV, the ones where the blonde thinks she’s finished off the maniac killer when he suddenly pops up with a chainsaw. But it was like that.
It was Jiggs Holloway.
He looked a little unsteady and his face was the color of bathroom putty, but he was definitely alive.
“Hey, Jiggs,” said someone. “You okay?”
“Guess so,” he said. “I thought I was going to puke to death for a while there.”
“You go to a doctor?”
“Nah. I feel okay now.”
“Maybe it was something you ate,” said Joey Scapetto.
“Maybe,” said Jiggs. “Or maybe it was having to watch Johnson here screw up so bad out in the field. It would of made any real baseball man puke to see that.” Joey and a couple others laughed.
“I bet you could use a drink,” said Joey.
“I bet you are right, Joey,” said Jiggs.
Everything sort of blurred after that. Later in my room I tried to figure out what went wrong. Maybe I hadn’t used enough rat poison. Or maybe he didn’t swallow enough because he kept spitting the tobacco juice. Or maybe he was just too evil to die. I didn’t know. It had scared me pretty bad.
I waited through the weekend, not playing Saturday and then going 0 for 3 Sunday with a walk, which Jiggs made a great deal over, saying that now that he had seen me on base he expected hell to freeze over any day. On Monday as usual we were on the bus, this time headed for Council Bluffs for a three-game series with the Bisons, that is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
By Tuesday I had recovered from the shock, and I had thought of a new plan. I got the idea from a rerun of Starsky & Hutch. It would be an accident. That morning I put on the dark glasses and took a bus to the airport in Omaha, which is across the river from Council Bluffs. I went to the car rental counter, which I was surprised how much they charge to rent even little cars. I rented this little Ford Escort for about thirty dollars a day plus about fifty dollars more for taxes and insurance.
I drove the car out into the country where I found some mud and drove through it back and forth a few times, and then smeared mud over the license plates, so you couldn’t see the numbers.
The plan was simple. There’s a bar across the street from the ballpark owned by an old guy named Sorenson who knew Jiggs from when they both played at Omaha in the American Association. Whenever we were in Council Bluffs, Jiggs would have a beer or two at Sorenson’s bar before walking over to the park. I figured I would have the car ready, and when Jiggs crossed the street I would run him down. It would be a hit-and-run accident, but nobody would be able to I.D. the car because of the mud. The motel in Council Bluffs where the Jets stayed is only two blocks from the park, so I would just park the car on a side street, walk back to the motel, then join the last stragglers walking to the park. I could return the car the next day. Nobody would ever connect me with it.
So a little after four I was sitting in the Escort, a block down from the bar, wearing dark glasses and a University of Iowa hat, when the door of the bar opened and Jiggs came out.
I switched on the engine. My palms were sweating on the steering wheel, but my mind was very cool. As he walked toward the street, I gunned the engine, and the little car jumped forward as fast as it could, which was faster than I supposed it could. Jiggs was looking the other way as he stepped off the curb. I had him dead in my sights.
Suddenly a baseball rolled out into the street, and a little kid, not more than ten or so and wearing a Bisons T-shirt, ran out after it. I swerved the wheel to the left as hard as I could and stomped on the brakes. The car skidded, shot across the line, and headed for the opposite curb. There was a group of old geezers standing there jabbering; they looked up and froze. I yanked the wheel back right. The car fishtailed like an Olympic skier, back wheels banging off the curb, and plowed straight into the passenger side of an oncoming Mercedes sedan. There was a terrible crash. I remember hitting this big pillow where the airbag exploded.
Next thing I knew guys came running up to the car. Jiggs was one of the first ones there. “Jeez,” he said. “It’s Johnson! You okay, boy?”
It was a good question. But everything seemed to be working. “Guess so,” I said.
A portly man in a suit appeared in the window. “What on God’s earth were you doing?” he yelled. “Look what you’ve done to my car!” I looked over at the Mercedes, which didn’t look so good. “Do you know who I am?” he yelled. “I am Myron W. Stevens!” And he proceeded to explain that he was a partner in a big Omaha law firm, and that he knew everyone who was worth knowing on both sides of the Missouri River and in Washington, too, and that he would personally see that he took every dime I had in the world and that I never drove a motor vehicle again as long as I lived. He was very eloquent about it, if that’s the word I want.
Jiggs was laughing. “Jeez, Johnson,” he said. “You finally hit something — and it turns out to be a lawyer’s Mercedes!”
They took me in for observation to the hospital, which there was nothing wrong with me, but I didn’t play that night. Next day Jiggs put me in, saying I was on a hot streak, and I went 0 for 3 before he pulled me for a pinch-hitter in the eighth.
The incident with the car had shaken me up, but if anything I hated Jiggs more than ever. I didn’t even think about the slump any more; all I could think about was killing him. Thursday night he put me in as a pinch-runner for the catcher, and I was thinking so much about him that I missed the hit-and-run sign and ran into a double play.
That night after the game we rode the bus back to Joplin for the start of a home stand, the Jets hosting Salina, Grand Island, and Sioux City.
I didn’t play at all against the Tornadoes over the weekend, which we scored thirty runs in three games as Salina has the worst pitching in the league. I barely watched the games, thinking all the time about guns and knives and ropes and blunt objects and not seeing any way to do it that I wouldn’t get caught. On Tuesday Jiggs decided to have me start, but it was against this phenom from Grand Island name of Crawford who was 9–0 with a 0.80 e.r.a., and we were shut out, me going 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. They called him up to Double-A next day.
I was like some kind of zombie during the next few games. I didn’t play much, this guy Mendoza who was taking my place hitting pretty decent and Jiggs letting him play, which was okay because Mendoza was a pretty good guy.
The next Friday night after we had lost to Sioux City, I was back at my room at the Shangri-La Motor Lodge, which is where most of us Jets live when we’re at home in Joplin. I couldn’t sleep and I turned on this movie on cable about a crazy kid who kills his parents, not the one with the kid in it from Home Alone, a different one. And then it hit me.
The perfect solution.
Saturday was a day game, twelve thirty start. Jiggs had Mendoza in for me again, he went 3 for 6 with a home run, which Wizniak their left fielder ought to have caught except he didn’t time his jump right. It was a long game, almost three hours, the Sioux finally winning 10-7.
Back in the clubhouse most of the guys showered quick and headed out. By about four thirty there were only a few guys still around. And Jiggs Holloway had climbed into the whirlpool.