If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  Brainard stared into his glass. Andy fidgeted; he’d heard it before. Across the table, Waterman arranged toothpicks in geometric patterns, his whiskey untouched. Andy and I nursed beers. The four of us were hunched over a table in a private room at Leininger’s, an oyster bar on Fourth.

  “Jimmy Creighton,” mused Brainard. “Flung balls past the best strikers in the land. Nobody could touch us on the Excelsiors. We toured up and down New York—first time any club did—everybody making a fuss over us. Then we won matches in Philly and Baltimore. People couldn’t thank us enough for our exhibitions. They took us into their homes, let us know we were respected and wanted!” He refilled his glass and downed the liquid in one swallow. “It wasn’t all so goddamned organized then. We played for the sport of it and made out fine. Jimmy was the only one got a regular salary. He was the first true professional, you know. Some claim Al Reach of the Athletics, but I know better. The rest of the Excelsiors shared the gate receipts, all of us in it together. Not like now, when those paying ain’t the ones playing. They take all our profits and use ’em however they care to!” He looked at me sharply. “Now they’re proposing to sell stock. They treat us like factory hands already. You watch, next they’ll try to auction us like niggers.”

  “How did Creighton die?” I asked.

  “Busted his gut open, the doc said. Jimmy was thin, didn’t carry much meat. Struck a ball so hard that something snapped inside him. Ran the bases to make his run, then collapsed crossing home. All us Brooklyn ballists went in on a marble headstone with a bat and ball. It’s up on Tulip Hill, in Greenwood.”

  Brainard wiped his eyes. “I miss old Jimmy,” he said thickly. “Miss them old times. Ask Harry, he knows how it was before he turned himself over to Champion and the sucking politicians.”

  I looked at Waterman. His face wore its usual bland mask. Our eyes met. I thought I saw a hint of something in his glance. Amusement? Concern?

  “We played like gents and were treated like gents.” Brainard’s voice rose aggressively. “Lots of times we’d banquet with the other club—spread the table right there on the grounds after. We didn’t play for riffraff, neither. One time, against the Atlantics, when toughs kept yelling insults, we walked off the field cool as could be, even though we were leading eight to six, with piles of money riding on the outcome. That was in ’sixty.” He sighed noisily. “Jimmy passed on in ’sixty-two, and that’s when it all started to go sour. Now it’s all for cash, ballists revolving from club to club, jumping like beetles around the country.”

  Nobody bothered to point out that Brainard himself was playing in a strange city, for cash.

  “C’mon, Acey,” said Waterman. “Let’s go, match tomorrow.”

  “Match every damned day!” Brainard snapped. “They think we’re machines, use us however it suits ’em—which means scramble for every dime in sight—and we’re supposed to turn out and bow and grin. And never lose. All so Champion can make speeches and ride in parades. Well, I ain’t playing tomorrow, that’s it.”

  “C’mon, Acey.” Waterman practically lifted him from his chair.

  “Harry knows better.” Brainard waggled his finger at us as Waterman pulled him to the door. “His brother skips practice or shows late for a train, what happens? Nothing! But you heard him today. He’ll keep my money if I so much as say something he don’t care to hear. Is that how gents go about their sport? Harry knows—” The closing door cut him off.

  Andy and I looked at each other. “What do you make of it?” I said.

  “Jealous, mainly. Acey figures it should be his time on top.”

  I nodded. “But something else is bugging him, too.”

  “I think the same,” said Andy. “But I don’t know what it could be.”

  This time she opened the door readily. “Hello, Samuel,” she said matter-of-factly, as if I dropped by every night at ten. “I’m missing Tim and feeling alone in this big house. I’m glad for your company.”

  “Are your boarders still away?”

  “Yes, it happens sometimes. They’ll be back tomorrow night, I believe.”

  “And Timmy?”

  “Tim also. Would you like tea?”

  She took me to her kitchen, where I sat next to an iron wood stove. Pans were suspended overhead. I watched as she prescalded a teapot and added three spoonfuls of black tea to water.

  “One for the pot,” she said. “The Irish always make it the same—strong enough to trot a mouse on, Father said.”

  While it steeped, she showed me her tea cozy; it was white with blue embroidered flowers and had come over with the family, one of the few possessions she had from that distant life.

  I watched her graceful movements. The oil lamp in the room made her skin almost amber. As she pushed strands of hair back from her cheek I realized I didn’t even know what her bare arms looked like; I had never seen them. God, what a repressed age.

  “You’re lovely,” I said.

  She did not reply, her head bent as she poured milk into cups and then added the tea. My vision was caught by her thick, luxuriant black hair, then by the flash of metal on her hand.

  “Let me see your ring,” I said, taking her hand. I bent and looked closely at the design. Worked into the worn silver, a heart was framed by two hands and topped by a crown. Her fingers trembled feather light in my hand; she withdrew them.

  “It was from Colm,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for this morning. Your gift touched me, for a certainty, but . . .”

  Yes?”

  “Samuel, there are two doves on it.”

  “And?”

  She lowered her head. “Oh, this is so hard. Colm means ‘dove’ in Gaelic, Samuel.”

  “I see.” I felt as if something had hit me. “Well, I’m sorry about that. Unfortunate coincidence.”

  “There’s more to be told,” she said, “but I never thought I would.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I think I must tell you.” Her eyes rose to mine, unfathomable as whorls of serpentine. “Some weeks after Colm died, there came a pale gray mourning dove. . . .”

  It appeared on her windowsill each day and looked in at her, its shadings muted and delicate. She put crumbs out; they were not taken. She tried to coax it inside, but it stayed calmly where it was. The idea that it wanted something from her, or wanted her to understand something, began to haunt her.

  “Then one day it was gone. It never came back. Another light in my life had gone out. I felt I’d failed the poor creature, as I’d failed Colm.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Didn’t Colm die in the war?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t stop him from going, don’t you see? I couldn’t hold him, even when I gave him my body—for which I believed God would surely punish me.”

  “But if you loved him, and you did everything you could—”

  “I know that now, Samuel, but then everything was so confused. Colm had been the whole of my world. For him to leave me forever, and then the dove, his namesake, to leave too. . . . Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “It devastated me again. Tim was still several months away. I was big as a cow, and hysterical. Mother took me to a spiritualist—”

  “Was her name Clara Antonia?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “How did you know?”

  I tried to gather my thoughts. Somewhere a composite picture must exist. All I had were fragments. “Andy mentioned her,” I said.

  “Oh, Andy. He and Brighid, always the practical ones. Twas Mother and me respected the Old Knowledge—we’d have burned as witches in other times.”

  “What did Clara Antonia say?”

  “That the dove was truly Colm, and that my suffering had brought him great distances. She said it was hard to believe he stayed as long as he had. The message he brought must have driven him through unimaginable hardship.”

  “And could she tell you his message?”

  She shook her head. “But he’d delivered it, she s
aid, and I should search my heart, for it was there.”

  “Did you?”

  “Ah, God, I tried.” A tremor edged her voice. “Everything I seemed to receive involved Colm’s perishing, his being dead. It was too painful.”

  The ghost figure of the soldier appeared in my mind, arm beckoning or pointing.

  “I became frantic, thinking I’d failed yet again. I was desperate to try anything. So that when Fearghus and John O’Neill wanted to bring me here to start a new life, I insisted on journeying first to the ground where Colm fell.”

  “To the battlefield?”

  “In Maryland, yes. Fearghus flatly said no, he’d never go back there. Doing so was terribly sad for John, I know, but he went with me. And he had men brought who could answer my every question.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  “You truly want to hear?”

  “Yes,” I said, the ghost soldier still in mind, “I do.”

  She talked for a long while, a rush of words spilling softly. She did not cry, though she came close. Colm O’Neill joined Meagher’s Irish Brigade in 1862 and marched off under summer skies to rousing music and cheers. Two months later, one September afternoon, he sprawled into oblivion at Antietam. It was, Cait had learned, one of the war’s bloodiest—and stupidest—military engagements. The Irish boys were ordered to attack Longstreet’s rebels dug in along a sunken road soon to be called Bloody Lane. In front of it the Confederates had laid fence rails. These positions, lying just beyond the crest of a hill, could not be hit effectively by rifle fire or even cannon. More rebels were concealed in a cornfield behind the forward lines, with artillery trained for maximum devastation. It was a death trap.

  The brigade moved toward the crest. Flags with the golden harp of Eire fluttered beside the Stars and Stripes in the autumn sunlight. So many of those green banners were shot to tatters that boys set leafy sprigs in their caps so that they could fight and die beneath the green. They launched themselves into an inferno. The hill exploded in fire and smoke, eruptions of earth, deafening noise. Musket fire raked them. Cannon volleys decimated them. In the first minutes, half the Sixty-third New York lay slaughtered. The brigade ran out of ammunition only a hundred yards from Bloody Lane, held its position in the maelstrom, was reinforced, charged blindly again. And again. Of the first twelve hundred, less than five hundred still lived. They fought on. Colm was in the final advance which cleared the last of the enemy from Bloody Lane, by then so filled with corpses it no longer served as a trench. They had done the superhuman, but the Union commander, cautious McClellan, failed to commit reserves for the decisive blow. Lee’s army limped away, still intact. All the valiant Irish lads, some would claim, had died for nothing. Among the corpses in the woods near Bloody Lane was that of Colm O’Neill.

  “I have his medal for bravery,” said Cait. “I keep it with his letters. But there was nothing brave about that place. The wind sighed in the trees. There was desolation. And death. And I stood there with Colm’s son inside me.”

  And finally she lowered her head and wept. She did not resist when I took her hand. I felt the work-roughened pads of her fingers and the soft skin on top and tried to think of some comfort to offer.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at tears. “I scarcely do this now.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She looked up at me. “You’re a kindly man, Samuel.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Since you’re not cooking for boarders, how about coming to tomorrow’s game? Harry’s wife and little girls will be there. We could eat afterward.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, rising. “But only after you have answered a question.”

  “Anything.”

  “Wait,” she said, and left the kitchen. She returned and handed me a tintype. I held its cardboard frame carefully, aware of sensations building and weaving within me, a thin piping fugue. I saw the handsome features of a dark-haired boy about twenty. She didn’t tell me who he was. She didn’t need to. I stared into the laughing eyes, half expecting to feel the inexplicable force Cait’s portrait had exerted on me. But there were only the piping sensations.

  “What’s your question?” I said, glancing up to find her eyes fixed on me.

  “I have to know.” Her voice was controlled. “Are you him?”

  It stunned me. And yet I think I’d almost anticipated it. Was I Colm? So simple. A confusion of possibilities whirled in my brain. Why did she think I might be? What about her yellow dress?

  “If I answer without knowing everything involved,” I said slowly, “will you accept it without explanation?”

  Yes,” she said. “For now.”

  Then, for now, as best I can honestly tell, no, I’m not Colm O’Neill.”

  She swallowed and looked away.

  “And if I’d said yes?” I asked.

  She turned back, and, very gradually, the corners of her mouth curved upward. Some of the heaviness in the room dissolved.

  “I suppose I would still attend your match tomorrow,” she said. “But it would be vastly different, would it not?”

  She sat beside Carrie Wright in the first row of the Grand Duchess. With only several hundred spectators on hand, Cait was easy to spot. And I was not alone in appreciating her ebony hair, pale features, and striking eyes.

  “Who’s the dark beauty next to Harry’s missus?” Allison asked.

  “Andy’s sister,” said Sweasy. “Prettiest lass ever in Newark. Us kids looked up to her like a queen. Ain’t seen her in years.”

  “Remember, Sweaze, how she’d tell me, ‘Don’t let Charles stray into trouble’?” Andy said, laughing.

  “Hell, I didn’t stray,” Sweasy said. “I went looking!”

  “She’s the true goods,” said George, eyeing Cait in a way I didn’t like at all. “Whyn’t you introduce me after the match, Andy?”

  “Sam’s ahead of you,” he replied. “Cait’s never come here just to see me play.”

  “Sam?” George, sounding startled, appraised me curiously. Sweasy shot me a malevolent stare before turning abruptly toward the field. I gathered he wasn’t overjoyed with Cait’s taste either.

  One of our problems on the diamond that afternoon was that the Central Citys weren’t yet convinced of our superiority.

  The other was that Brainard never showed up.

  The game, which the Enquirer would call the “poorest ever played in the West,” was long and frustrating. With Allison again begging off catching, Harry started Waterman behind the plate, Allison in right, Mac in center, and me at third. Early on, after a liner shot between my legs, Harry switched me with Allison. The Central Citys teed off on Harry’s floaters. He tried George and Mac in the box. Nobody was particularly effective. At the end of seven we were tied, 22-22.

  In the field we stunk. I had only one chance in right—a foul fly I couldn’t reach to take on the bounce—but the others had plenty, and they botched far too many. Several of George’s throws sailed ten feet over Gould’s head. The usually sure-handed first sacker dropped others. Allison and Sweasy looked like they were asleep. The Central Citys, hardly defensive whizzes themselves, played with growing confidence. We were making them look good.

  We didn’t get to the Syracuse hurler until the top of the eighth. By then it was nearly eight o’clock, and the game had run well over three hours. The sun was settling behind the Mill Creek hills, darkening the smoke-laden sky. Venting our frustrations with hit after hit, we tallied thirteen runs before making a single out.

  The Central Citys began to stall. If darkness ended play, the score would revert to the end of the previous inning—giving them a tie and spoiling our record. Their pitcher went through increasingly complicated windups, threw wildly, took his warnings, and issued walks. The catcher retrieved balls leisurely after letting them bounce past him. Knowledgeable spectators began to protest. On the bench we muttered curses as we watched the hurler study the ball, the batter, the defensive alignment, adjust his uniform, wind up, throw. Another wide
called. The catcher jogged for the ball. Only when the ump threatened to call a forfeit did they clean up their act a bit.

  Harry went down swinging on three pitches for our first out. Andy legged a shallow shot to left into a double. I slammed my first pitch over second for a single, scoring him. Sweasy rapped a ball to shortstop, who threw it suspiciously wide of first. Sweasy tripped and fell—deliberately, I was sure—on the baseline. The first baseman retrieved the ball and had no choice but to tag him. Two out.

  And at that point it ended.

  The Central Citys’ president, having risen from the scorers’ table to talk to the ump after Harry’s strikeout, now rose again. In a voice that carried over the diamond, he announced that Harry and Sweasy had deliberately made outs, and that darkness made further play too dangerous. At his command the Syracuse players trooped off the field.

  We were aghast at the flagrancy of it. There was plenty of light—we’d all played when it was far darker. Harry instructed Mac, due up next, to stay at the plate. He remained there a good five minutes while Harry argued our case. I found myself wondering about Harry’s strikeout. I didn’t think he’d deliberately lie or deceive. But he wanted fiercely to win. Had he subconsciously pulled a fast one?

  The ump awarded us the game by the existing score of 36—22. Since Syracuse refused to continue, it seemed the only choice. I’d heard of clubs quitting the field after disputes, and I remembered Champion wanting to pull us out in Troy—where we most certainly would have taken a forfeit loss. The problem was that no standing body existed to settle disputes. The association met only in winter. We had our victory, but it left a bad taste.

  We went to Andy’s favorite eatery, the Main Street Dining Saloon, a noisy, crowded restaurant near the Gibson that offered tasty food at moderate prices. We apologized for the sloppy game, but Cait said that she had enjoyed Carrie Wright’s company and found the game’s disputes interesting. Later at the boardinghouse she fixed tea for me again. This time we talked of nothing very serious. I felt comfortable with her. When I asked about Timmy’s return, she said sometime that night, she expected. I kept from asking any of the questions that occurred to me.