Slider’s Son

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  Grant narrowed his eyes at Frank. “What are you thinking?”

  Frank bent over and packed icy snow from the catwalk into a ball. He tossed it up, caught it, and hurled it toward the top of the Norway pine behind the State Bank. The ice brushed through the needles, but missed the spine of the tree by a few feet. Frank raised an eyebrow at Grant. “Beat that. Can ya? Bob Feller could.”

  Grant looked at Frank. Bob Feller was his idol and everybody knew it.

  Just last summer, Bob Feller was still in high school in Van Meter, Iowa, and was ready to play for the Fargo-Moorhead Twins minor league team. Uncle Neil picked up Slider and Grant to go watch him pitch in Fargo. On the way to the game, they stopped for gas in Valley City. All three of them got out to stretch their legs.

  The service station man came out. “Fill her up?” He started to wash the windshield. “Where you fellows headed?”

  “To Fargo,” Grant answered. “To watch Bob Feller pitch!”

  The service station man stopped, mid-swipe. “Didn’t you hear the news?”

  “What news?” Neil said.

  “He’s not playing. The Cleveland Indians got him already. Yesterday, in fact. He’s going straight to the majors.”

  Grant’s heart sank. He wouldn’t get to see Rapid Robert, the Heater from Van Meter, after all.

  They drove to Fargo, anyway.

  At the stadium, the announcer said, “I know lots of you folks drove here tonight to see Rapid Robert, the Heater from Van Meter, Bob Feller, pitch. But most of you heard, he’s already in the Cleveland Indians’ bullpen. We fixed up a special treat for you, though. So sit tight. For five cents, you can take a turn in the booth between innings here and watch a newsreel clip of young Bob Feller, and see his wind-up and pitch. And let me tell you, folks, it’s something to see. It’s worth your nickel.”

  So that was as close to Bob Feller as Grant got.

  Rapid Robert had to go back to Iowa to finish high school this year. If he graduated from high school and went straight to the big leagues, it was possible for Grant, too. In July, last summer, Grant read in the paper, Feller struck out eight St. Louis Cardinals in one night, including Rip Collins, and Leo Durocher twice.

  Ever since, Grant knew he wanted to be the next Bob Feller.

  * * *

  He could have resisted almost anything else Frank said to him, but not a challenge to be like Bob Feller.

  “Get it, Grant,” Little Joe muttered. “You can do it.”

  Grant scooped up a double handful of snow and ice and packed it hard. He took one step back and threw. Grant’s ice ball smacked against the trunk of the tree. The pine tree shuddered and snow fluttered off the branches and needles.

  “Direct hit! Strike!” yelled Orland.

  “What’ll these do to cars, ya think?” asked Frank.

  “Man-o-man,” Little Joe said. “Why would we want to throw at cars?”

  Frank shrugged. “’Cause we can.”

  Little Joe looked at Frank. “You off your nut?”

  “Hardly. And,” Frank went on, “’cause Grant can practice his aim. Good for the pitching arm.” He packed another snow and ice ball and tossed it to Grant. “Only one way to find out. Let’s see your wind-up on the water tower.”

  Grant grinned and wound up. He slid a toe on the icy surface of the catwalk and lifted his foot in true Bob Feller style. As he did, his other foot slid right out from under him, his butt slammed down on the icy metal walkway, and he felt himself going. In one sickening split second he imagined the ground rushing at him from water tower height and all his bones smashing on the frozen ground below. He flailed his arms and grabbed at a diagonal crossbeam of the railing and caught it just before his hips went over the edge.

  “Man-o-man,” Little Joe yelled, “watch it. That was close.”

  Grant pulled himself back against the wall and sat, his chest heaving and his legs shaking. Inside his mittens, his hands were pure sweat.

  The other boys scooped great fistfuls of the untouched snow. They stockpiled a stash of ammunition until only a slick icy film remained on the catwalk.

  Grant got back to his feet.

  “Here! Look,” Frank called. “First target.”

  A green Plymouth navigated down the snow-packed Church Road, in front of the courthouse.

  “It’s Morely,” Frank said. “The banker.” He fired, but it fell short and splatted on the road near the front right tire. Orland’s throw glanced off a back tire. Grant planted his feet firmly and threw the next one. No more Bob Feller wind-ups. His pitch hit the car on the swooping front fender. Mr. Morely slammed on his brakes, looking around. He jumped out, pulled his overcoat tight, and looked underneath the front end.

  “Look at him look!” yelped Orland. “He thinks he hit something!”

  “Hush up!” hissed Grant. “He’ll hear us—”

  Frank heaved another snowball.

  Whack! The snowball hit the man in the rear end. He jerked himself upright and whipped his head around, looking for the culprits, every direction but up.

  Frank snorted.

  “Be quiet!” Little Joe said. They tried to be quiet, but they were giggling so hard they could hardly hold onto the railing. They shook with quiet laughter until a car pulled up behind Mr. Morely and honked.

  Mr. Morely threw up his hands. “All right, all right!” he said, and jumped back into his car and slammed the door.

  “He didn’t even think about looking this way,” Orland said.

  “Here comes one,” Grant said. “Look, it’s the dry goods truck. Bigger target.”

  Little Joe formed an icy ball. “Let’s all throw at the same time.”

  They threw. Crack. Crack. Splat. Three of the snowballs hit their target at almost the same moment. This driver slammed on his brakes and skidded on the icy street.

  “Two for two!” yelled Frank.

  “Shhhh,” Grant said. “He’s lookin’.” The boys hung on. Mr. Martin opened his door and looked everywhere except up.

  “Who’d think to look up?” Orland said under his breath.

  The boys started laughing again, but Mr. Martin was still looking around, so they held themselves in until Grant thought he might collapse inward. Implode, his dad would say.

  “Lookit him!” Grant sputtered under his breath. Martin had climbed onto his truck to see what had landed on the top. “Maybe he thinks a winter goose dive-bombed him.”

  “Or God is striking him,” Orland said. Mr. Martin taught Sunday School at the Lutheran church where his mom was the organist. “Would serve him right. He thinks God has His nose in everybody’s business all the time.”

  “Ha!” Frank smacked Orland in the shoulder. “Good one.”

  The idea that God was sending Mr. Martin a message with their snowballs struck them so funny they could hardly keep their laughter quiet.

  Mr. Martin wasn’t easily hornswoggled. He stood beside the truck, hands on his hips, trying to be logical about what had happened. The more he looked around, the harder the boys shook with laughter, the harder it was to stay quiet, and the harder they tried, the more they snickered.

  A pickup came swerving up the road behind Martin’s truck. Mr. Martin surveyed the block once more, jumped in, slammed the door, and sped off before the pickup could rear-end him.

  The boys erupted in laughter.

  Frank looked around. “I’m going up on the roof. We’ve used up all the snow on the catwalk.” He scampered up the ladder from the catwalk to the sloping roof of the water tower. The single blue light beamed from the pinnacle into the night. From the sloping ladder on the roof, Frank tossed a snowball down at the other boys. “I’m goin’ to the tip-top.”

  “You sure you oughtta?” Little Joe leaned out against the rail, straining to see Frank’s feet disappear above him. “It’ll be slipperier. Dangerous.”

  “You all are yellow bellies,” Frank muttered.

  Grant laughed, but his stomach was in a knot and his palms started sweat
ing again, watching Frank’s feet disappear.

  “Uh-oh,” said Little Joe.

  The boys looked. An old, dark-green Model A swerved down Church Road on its way to Main Street.

  “Big Joe,” said Grant. “Wonder where he was. Don’t throw at him.”

  A snowball went hurling through the night air in Big Joe’s direction. “Too late,” said Frank from above.

  “Man-o-man,” Little Joe said. “He’ll kill us if he sees us.”

  The snowball smacked and shattered against Big Joe’s windshield. The Model A swerved and skidded sideways on the street. It came to stop at an angle, front wheels against a snowdrift.

  The driver’s door swung open and Big Joe spilled out, all six-foot-five of him. He staggered against the rear fender and surveyed the street.

  “Be quiet.” Little Joe begged in a whisper.

  “Wha . . . ?” Big Joe gaped around him. Slowly, he swung his head up and down the block, past the courthouse, and then up, up, until his eyes landed directly on the boys.

  “Holy cow,” Frank muttered from the roof. “Gosh darn it all, he sees us.”

  Big Joe left his car door hanging open and strode toward the base of the water tower in a swaggering, curvy line.

  “Get him,” Frank commanded from above.

  “No! He will kill us,” Little Joe backed up against the wall of the water tower, as if he could stay out of his dad’s line of sight, and hissed, “Don’t!”

  Big Joe stumbled, but reached out to start climbing the ladder.

  “Too late,” Frank said, and he shoved a pile of snow off the roof so that it fell like an avalanche past the boys, past the catwalk. Grant leaned out and saw the snow land straight on Big Joe’s head and down his neck. Up above them all, Frank snickered.

  Big Joe turned his big face upward, and Grant jerked back out of his line of sight. Big Joe glared through his snow-covered face and through his drunken haze. “You blasted li’l pack of no-gooders. I’m gonna kill the passel of ya. Give ya hidings you’ll never forgit.”

  “Let’s get down!” Frank yelled.

  Above him, Grant heard Frank scootch across the metal roof and then heard a scraping, scrambling, sliding, and “Crap! Holy cow!”

  Grant grabbed the railing tighter and leaned out, craning his neck to see up on the roof, but couldn’t see anything, could only hear the sound of scrabbling and sliding above him, the sound in slow motion, from the peak of the roof moving downward. And Frank’s feet came shooting out over the edge of the roof.

  Grant held on, staring, feeling as if the universe had stopped, that the air had been sucked out of the world, the sliding sound gone, the silence a vacuum in his ears, waiting for the sickening thump of Frank’s body a hundred feet below. It didn’t come. Frank dangled, half on the roof and half off, his legs outside the perimeter of the catwalk, fifteen feet above them.

  “My . . . mitten caught . . . a rivet.” Frank managed to say. “Help!”

  Grant heard yarn ripping.

  Orland stretched an arm toward Frank’s feet, seven feet too far away to touch. “How?”

  Little Joe stood, plastered against the water tower wall, as far as he could get from the edge of the catwalk, looking up at Frank and then down in his father’s direction.

  Grant looked down. Far below, Big Joe stared upward, frozen on the bottom rung, his bristly, unshaven jaw hanging open, still covered with icy snow.

  “Joe! Big Joe!” Grant yelled. “Get help! Get my dad! Go get Slider!”

  Big Joe stumbled forward again and put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. “I’m gonna kill ya for that. I said it . . .” He looked up at Grant, then he looked up farther, saw Frank dangling. “Little bastard deserves ta fall—” And his foot slid off the icy rung, he hit his head against one of the rungs, and he went face-down in the snow.

  “Big Joe!” Grant hollered at the top of his lungs.

  “Help!” Frank screamed.

  But Big Joe didn’t budge, face-planted in the snow.

  “Big Joe!” Grant yelled. “Get up! Help!”

  “Grant!” Frank’s voice sounded like a girl’s. “Help . . . help me!”

  Grant inched closer to the spot below Frank. He stretched as far as he could, farther than Orland had reached, farther than he dared, not breathing. But stretching, his fingertips were still a good six feet from grabbing Frank’s feet. “Hang on, Frank. Hang on.”

  “I . . . don’t know . . . how long I can. One finger. A rivet.”

  Grant skated along the catwalk, clinging to the railing, toward the ladder down. “Frank. Hang on!” He was almost screaming. “You guys,” he glanced at Little Joe and Orland while he swung over the edge of the catwalk, “talk to him. Keep him hanging on. I’m gonna get Slider.”

  Grant’s feet found the ladder and he started climbing down as fast as he could, far faster than he’d come up, faster than was safe, but he had to. No matter how far he fell, it wouldn’t be as far as Frank would . . . if Frank fell, he would die.

  He looked up, up, all the way up at Frank dangling, and while he climbed down, he screamed, “Frank! Hang on!” He jumped the last steps over Big Joe’s hulk and landed in the snow.

  And he took off at a dead run for Grumpy’s Tavern. It was only the other end of Main Street, but it seemed like a mile in the snow.

  Grant banged the bar door open, and the smell of coal smoke engulfed him, sucked right into his heaving lungs. No tire fire on Saturday night and no rubber smoke. The place went silent, and everybody’s head turned to look at Grant. The universe stopped.

  “Slider!” he yelled between breaths. “Help!”

  Slider spun around on his wooden stool, rose to his feet and grabbed his hat without asking a single question. Grant wasn’t prone to false alarms, and Grant could tell Slider knew he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t something big.

  “Frank’s dangling. From the water tower. By a rivet. His mitten.” His chest heaved from running.

  “What the heck you boys doing on the water tower?” Slider said, while yanking on his coat. He nodded at Grumpy. “Just in case.” He grabbed the coiled rope from the just-in-case wall, and hustled after Grant into the cold.

  They ran. Slider tossed his cigarette as they ran across the ice and through the deep snow along the alley behind Main Street. In the faint streetlights, they could see a shadow, legs dangling from the water tower roof. Hanging by a mitten. One hand.

  “Slider! Help!” Frank’s voice was pinched now, full of fear and getting tired. “I’ve got . . . a rivet, but I can’t hang . . . on.”

  “Don’t move.” Slider sized up the rope and the distance. Grant watched his dad think fast. There was nothing to loop the rope over if he threw it. Slider trotted to the ladder, rope over his shoulder, and looked at Big Joe, face down in the snow, without slowing down. “Criminy.”

  Then he climbed. Carefully but quickly. Very quickly. Grant followed.

  On the catwalk, Slider kept climbing, up to the roof and onto the roof ladder. He made a big noose in the end, and slid the rope around one of the rungs. He leaned out and slid the noose over the edge of the roof to Frank.

  Frank grabbed it with his free hand.

  “Loop it around your shoulder, so it’ll hold better. Get your head and arm through.”

  Frank slipped his elbow through it and hung on. Then pulled it under his arm and ducked his head through.

  “Let go of the rivet and grab the rope with that hand.”

  “I can’t . . . My mitten’s stuck.” Frank’s voice was pinched.

  “Leave the darn mitten, then. Pull your hand out.”

  So Frank slid his hand out and grabbed the rope with his cold, stiff hand. He swiped at the mitten, to pull it free, but the yarn was wedged behind the rivet.

  Slider slowly let more rope up and over the ladder rung so that Frank swung lower and lower off the edge of the roof.

  “Frank. Swing your legs so you swing over the catwalk. Boys, grab his legs. Don’t know
if we got enough rope to lower him to the ground. Can’t pull him back up. We’ll put him on the catwalk.”

  Grant and Orland and Little Joe braced themselves against the railing and reached out. “Lower, Dad!” Grant called. Slider lowered Frank farther. Frank swung his legs to move through space, pumped himself like on a rope swing.

  “Harder!” yelled Orland. “Swing harder, Frank!”

  Frank swung over their heads, his feet within grasp.

  The boys grabbed, but couldn’t catch hold with their cold fingers. He swung away, out over the darkness. “A few more feet down, Dad.”

  “Be ready this time,” Grant commanded.

  “Ready?” Slider called.

  Frank kicked back toward them, this time even with them, and all three boys grabbed—coat, leg, rope—and they caught hold.

  “We got ’im!” Orland yelled.

  They pulled Frank against the railing. “Dad. Keep hanging on ’til we get him!”

  “I’m not lettin’ go ’til you tell me he’s on solid footing.”

  Frank grabbed at the railing but couldn’t hang on, breathing so hard they could all hear him. The boys held tight. Frank was stiff, as if he had frozen into an icicle, but finally he grabbed the railing and moved his legs enough to throw one leg over the railing and then the other. The boys held tight all the while. Finally, Frank’s weight was on the catwalk, and he leaned against the water tower tank and shrugged out of the rope.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  “Okay, Dad,” Grant yelled. He let the rope swing out into the night air.

  All four boys shook as they climbed down the ladder without saying a word. They each stepped over Big Joe’s inert body and then they stood silently at the bottom, waiting for Slider.

  Frank’s teeth chattered. “You,” he said to Big Joe’s body. “You big good-for-nothin’ louse. I c-c-c-could kill you. Scarin’ us like that, and then not bein’ w-w-worth enough to go for help. I coulda died. You c-c-coulda killed me. I could kill you for that. Yer nothin’ but a louse.”

  “Shut yer trap, Frank,” Little Joe said. “Don’t talk like that. That’s my dad. You almost killed yourself.”

  “But he—” Frank started.

  “Yeah, just be quiet, Frank. It’s not Big Joe’s fault this time,” Orland said.