“Woman, please, we do ourselves no glory, protracting this deception, indulging what cannot be.”
“Ha.” Miss Giselle quoted from a book that Henry knew: “ ‘Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.’ ”
“You say a lie, as once I ignorantly lied to myself. The truth is that bliss eludes the mass of us. Go back in.”
“Get me to a nunnery, eh? And how have you come to regard yourself as one of ‘us’? The ‘mass of us’? You’re a murderer, Henry. Hell’s tortures are too mild for this… sniveling rejection you shy at me, you wretched devil!”
Henry sat down again. “Don’t,” he said, so softly it was almost a message to himself. “Whence did I come? What is my destination?”
“Philadelphia,” Miss Giselle mocked. “Say we’re finished-mince no words-and I’ll go inside. You’ll never lay eyes on me again. Just look me in the face and say it.”
“That painful act I’ve already accomplished.”
“If you meant it, you can do it again.”
Henry sadly shook his head. “Our furtive meetings must cease. You may not accompany me when I leave.”
“Then you’ve slain me, Henry. Slain me.”
Henry’s face was so moony white it seemed to reflect the trout-fin blue of Miss Giselle’s gown. Miss Giselle sent him a bitter kiss off the back of her hand and pivoted in the shadowy grass. Henry watched her stride away.
“Fornication-filth and incest.” Henry didn’t mean to be funny, and I couldn’t laugh at him because his whole body had shaken with the blurting of those curses.
“What’ll she do?” I asked him.
His very skin sagged on him. “Forget me. Devote herself anew to the licensed desiderata of her husband.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but the grief in Henry’s voice was plain enough. It quirked my own upbeat mood about our call-up. When we returned to McKissic House, his slumped shoulders vexed me every step of the way. I wanted to do a maypole dance around him. Instead I dragged myself to bed, in a house already dark and snore-riven. And Henry paid no heed to Christ’s advice to set all anxiety aside.
On Saturday, the Gendarmes humiliated us. I don’t remember the score, and I’ve struggled for years to forget my two muffs at shortstop. Buck Hoey led the charge against us, with four hits in five tries and an incredible catch in the eighth of a real stinger off the bat of Worthy Bebout. Hoey’s catch killed our only feeble whack at a rally.
“Tied,” Mister JayMac told us, like we didn’t know we’d bungled our chance to coast. “Any need to explain what yall’ll have to do tomorrow, gentlemen?”
“Excel or expire,” Manani said. “Put up or perish.”
“Cripes,” Turkey Sloan said. “Knock it off, Vito.”
“Suck it in or succumb.” Manani caught Sloan’s gaze and held it like a carrier gunner lining up a Zero in his cross hairs. “Do or die.”
Suddenly, “Do or die” no longer struck even Turkey Sloan as the hackneyed saw of a low-grade dago brain.
55
On Sunday afternoon, the Gendarmes played us tough again. Their ace, Sundog Billy Wallace, dueled our rookie star, Fadeaway Ankers. Neither had his best stuff, but Wallace was always a scrapper and Fadeaway’d learned from Dunnagin how to pitch when his speedball had taken a holiday. By the middle of the fourth, the scoreboard read three to three.
Buck Hoey’d picked up right where he’d finished yesterday’s game. Nothing existed for him but himself, the ball, the bases, and the base paths. He didn’t bullyrag or chatter, he just centered himself and played.
In the top of the fifth, at first again on his third single of the day, Hoey took a crouching lead, broke on Fadeaway’s move to the plate, and geysered up out of his slide, after hooking around my tag, in a swirl of red dust. He called time to brush himself off, and when he did, I touched him on the hip with the web of my glove, a half-hearted effort to get the base ump to throw a thumb at him. No go. Because of the timeout, the fact Hoey stood off the bag slapping red-orange dust from his pants didn’t mean cracklin bread.
My meaningless tag got Hoey’s attention, though. He cocked awake and jabbed me in the gut with his finger.
“Uh-uh-uh,” said the base ump, Little Cuke Gordon. “Hands to yoresef, Hoey.”
“S just a love poke. Only one Dumbo’s gotten all season. Less, of course, Jumbo’s buggering him.”
“Put a lid on it, Hoey, or clean it up.”
“Christ, Gordon, you sound like a bluenose.” Hoey returned to second. “And, Dumbo, you poor gazoonie,” he said, kicking some dirt at me with the side of his shoe, “tell Mister JayMac he lost Highbridge a pennant the day he dealt me. Tell him it was a damned stupid thing to do.”
I flipped the ball back to Fadeaway and returned to my spot at short. The only way to deal with an asshole, I thought, was to wipe it-which us Hellbenders intended to do on the field. Hoey, meanwhile, tunneled into himself again, taking his lead, daring Fadeaway to pick him off. No need. The next hitter up fouled out to Curriden, ending the inning.
Later, during the seventh-inning stretch, with our organist playing a medley of show tunes and Cokesbury hymns, Milt Frye spoke out over the PA system: “S a great time to visit our concession stands. Slaw dogs, nickel Co-Cola, boiled peanuts, and, one of yall’s favorites, Cracker Jacks. Patriotic Cracker Jacks-a prize in ever box, not a one made in Japan…
“I’ve jes got some big news for immediate release. Namely, two of our worthiest ’Benders-though I don’t mean Mr Bebout-have earned train tickets to Canaan. Yessir. Come Tuesday, Jumbo Hank Clerval and Battlin Danny Boles will be bona fide big leaguers. The Phils need help, and these fellas’re gonna go up to provide it. We know what they can do. Now them pitiful long-sufferers in the City of Brotherly Love’re gonna find out too.
“Whadda. Yall. Think. Bout. That?”
Nearly everybody on hand went loopy. Cow bells. Hooting. Clapping. Ooga horns. You’d’ve thought FDR’d just announced the unconditional surrender of Hitler and Tojo.
In our dugout, Henry peered gloomily down the bench at Mister JayMac. “Who chose this ill-timed moment to divulge our good fortune?”
“It wasn’t I,” Mister JayMac said.
“Atta way a go!” Lamar Knowles told Henry and me. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Danny? Didn’t I?”
Several other guys, including even Sosebee and Evans, came over to congratulate us.
The crowd rioted in place. Pretty soon we could hear it chanting, “Jumbo and Dumbo! Send em out PRONTO!”
Henry waved his arm in disgust. The crowd’d seemed to’ve forgotten the game in the hullabaloo of Frye’s announcement, and the Gendarmes had another reason, like they needed it, to come after us like rabid badgers.
“Hush em up!” Mister JayMac shouted down the bench at Henry and me. “Get out there and tip your caps!”