Now the onlookers found their voices and the players regained their edge, especially Clark’s people, who laid down a verbal assault of taunts thick as fog. My uncle’s team gave it back, and a casual observer would have thought he’d stumbled upon the Yankees and Dodgers in a grudge game.
The noise unnerved Joe Burke. He peered in at the jeering Philly Clark and missed badly with his first pitch. Philly laughed and said something to Burke, then yelled out to my uncle at his shortstop position. I saw Tom’s face darken but he said nothing. Joe Burke put the next pitch right down the middle, a gift, a Labor Day courtesy, and Philly sent it high and far into the trees on the far side of the diamond, farther than I’d ever seen anyone hit a baseball outside of Cubs’ Park, a howitzer shot. But foul. A great whoosh of air left the crowd and the ones from Philly’s side of the neighborhood crowded the foul lines and cheered him on. I saw him shoot another look at my uncle, an insufferable look of confidence, conquest. A few yards away, still on her blanket, I saw the girl Helen. She wasn’t watching, she was picking at blades of grass near her blanket, her body stiff, and now I understood. I looked at my uncle who had not once looked her way, and finally understood.
Philly scalded another pitch past third base, just foul, and told Joe Burke to let him have that one again.
Then my uncle came to the mound. For a moment he spoke to Joe Burke, then stepped back and signaled the infielders to come in for a meeting. Uncle Mike trudged in, bearlike, from first, the long-armed George Friesl from third, Don Verschor from second, and Ernie Scholtz, the little catcher. The meeting quieted the crowd and the little cluster of sweating men in the center of the dirt field held every eye. I knew little of baseball, only that they were in trouble, with all bases occupied and a good hitter up. I understood that even if they got Philly out, there would be another hitter, and that it was unlikely Joe Burke would make it through the inning.
They spoke for a moment and then the meeting was over, and as the others returned to their positions, Joe Burke moved to shortstop. Tom had his arm around Uncle Mike and was speaking to him in a low voice, and Uncle Mike looked unhappy. Tom walked him part of the way back to first, and as they came nearer to me, I heard Tom say, “I’m countin’ on you, big fella.” Uncle Mike nodded once, then shot a quick, guilty look in the direction of the baserunner on first. He took his position, resumed his half-crouch and looked rigidly ahead of him.
Uncle Tom walked back to the mound and showed everyone the ball so that there could be no doubt what was happening. I was near delirious with joy, it was the stuff of daydreams and movies: Grover Cleveland Alexander—Grandpa’s hero—aging and hung over, trudging to the mound to strike out Ruth, Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri. My uncle would strike out Philly Clark and whoever they threw at him next, for clearly God watched the baseball diamonds below.
The noise grew and Philly Clark was nodding at my uncle as though he’d expected this all along, and then he barked something at Tom that sounded like, “You’re a joke,” and my uncle said nothing. Behind me I heard people wondering what was going on, what my uncle had in mind. I heard someone say “bad blood” and somewhere my grandfather could be heard calling Philly “that goddamn bum,” and I wondered why he sounded so despondent.
Tom went into a stretch and the runner on third, an irritating little dark-haired man, began the time-honored jitterbug of the baserunner, calling out to Tom, faking a dash toward home, laughing, running with little mincing steps and diving back toward the base. Clark called for my uncle to pitch and Tom threw one that was shoulder high and called “ball two.”
Philly grinned. “Whatsamatter, Flynn? Nervous? You look like you’re ready to piss in your pants.”
Some of his teammates hooted. Tom just went into his stretch. The little man on third danced twenty feet toward home and Tom turned as if to pick him off, then just waved at him in disgust. He faced the mound, looked in at Philly Clark, went back into the stretch, then wheeled to third, and the baserunner froze. I could see the shock in his eyes. They had the little man caught in a rundown, eventually tagging him out. The runner on second moved up to third, but the man on first remained there, claiming loudly that Uncle Mike had held him by his belt.
Uncle Mike stormed toward the umpire. “Did you see it? Did you see me hold him?”
“I didn’t see nothing. I was watching the rundown.”
“Okay, then.”
Uncle Mike stalked back to first and exchanged hot looks with the base runner. Out on the mound, my Uncle Tom looked relaxed. He tossed the ball in the air and waited for his fielders to settle in, then looked at Philly Clark.
“Well, now it’s interesting, Philly. Two outs.”
“Throw the ball and shut up, Flynn.”
Tom nodded, looked at the two baserunners, winked at Uncle Mike and threw a fastball at Philly Clark’s chest. Philly swung the big bat in self-defense, fouling the pitch armlessly. His movement sent him stumbling backward from the batter’s box and he almost went down on the seat of his pants. For the first time, Philly Clark did not seem elegant and confident.
He glared at my uncle for a long moment. “Over the goddamn plate, Flynn, or I’ll come out there.”
“Ah, quit your complainin’. Nobody told you to swing at it. You don’t know the strike zone from your behind. And you swing like a broad.” The crowd had fallen silent, breathless, they could have been corpses.
Philly muttered something I couldn’t make out and took his stance once more. He took his graceful practice swing and yelled, “Over the goddamn plate this time.”
“Take it easy,” my uncle said. “I’m gettin’ all nervous.”
Then he went into his stretch, looked once at each baserunner, and threw another fastball. It was never a strike, never had a chance to be a strike, and the umpire had the sense to leap away as the pitch sailed in high and tight toward Philly Clark’s long chin. The ball missed him, but he fell back as though shot, and the bat sailed fifteen feet behind him.
People were yelling and cursing, and I heard some of Tom’s friends hooting and laughing and calling out to Philly Clark. The umpire yelled in a trembling voice for Tom to be more careful. Out on the mound, Tom shrugged and held up his mitt for the ball.
Philly Clark got to his feet and took a couple of steps past the batter’s box. He pointed with the fat end of the bat.
“You tried to hit me, you sonofabitch!”
“No. If I try to hit you, you’ll get hit. You’re just jumpy up there, Philly. Got to calm down if you want to be a hitter.”
“You little Mick bastard, you hit me and I’ll come out there…”
Tom stepped toward the plate. “And what? And do what, asshole? Never seen you hit anybody but women. You gonna beat up my sister, Philly?”
Tom looked around, feigned panic. “Hey, somebody keep an eye on my sister, Philly Clark’s pissed off.”
Philly looked to be on the verge of coming after my uncle, and Tom waved his mitt at him.
“Get in the box, tough guy, I got one more for you.”
Clark stepped back into the box and took that long practice swing that I will see in my mind’s eye till the day I die: Philly holding the bat out one-handed, the business end pointed directly at my uncle, then bringing the bat back, two-handed. I can see the bat poised just behind Philly’s right ear, moving slightly, rich in menace, and then the scene plays itself out once more.
My uncle stood with his glove touching his leg for an extra measure of time and then went into a full windup, ignoring the baserunners. I watched him coil back into himself and uncoil as he released the ball, I saw the strain as he put his body into the pitch and his face as he released the ball. I would never see his face again as it was at that moment, dark with effort and anger and the catharsis of his moment, and in his eyes I saw something a little like hope as he followed the hot hard flight of the ball.
The pitch sailed
directly into Philly Clark, giving him no time to dive, only to turn a shoulder and take the missile high in the small of his back. Now he did go down, and I watched him roll around in the dirt for several seconds. Gradually he got himself up on one knee and stared out at my uncle.
On the mound, Tom took a step back and folded his arms. I saw him mouth the words “Ball four.”
“You little shit!” Philly snarled, and he was charging the mound before anyone could restrain him. I opened my mouth to warn my uncle and then someone grabbed me, my Aunt Anne, and I realized I had been running out onto the diamond.
She yelled, “No, Danny!” and pulled me back. With her restraining arm still across my chest, I watched and now I saw what the meeting on the mound had been about.
At the exact moment Philly Clark rushed my uncle, his men on first and third both moved to join the fight and they both went down at the same instant. On third, George Friesl wrapped his gibbon arms around the baserunner and flung him facedown into the gray dirt at his feet, and the runner on first wasn’t two steps off the base before Uncle Mike put a beefy forearm to his head, and the man’s knees buckled. A half second later the batter warming up behind Philly dropped his bat and followed Philly out, but Ernie Scholtz tripped him, and Philly Clark’s friends seemed to be hitting the ground all over the field. Both benches poured men out into the brawl but the heart of the fight took place on the mound, and I watched till I feared my heart would burst and I’d be the lone fatality.
Philly Clark was on my uncle like a cat. He hurled his big body at Tom and they both sailed several feet off the mound. They raised a cloud when they landed in the dry dirt, and I saw four fists pounding away as they rolled over and over. For a moment Philly Clark appeared to engulf my uncle, and then they were rolling once more and I saw that Tom was still battering at the bigger man, holding onto Philly’s shirt with one hand and whacking away with the other. They separated, scrambled to their feet, and I saw that both were bleeding and filthy. Blood seemed to be coming from Tom’s nose, and Philly was cut over an eye. They stepped back, circled, joined, and threw more punches, then danced out of range. The blood made it different to me, I was terrified, I grew nauseous. I’d never seen men fight. I was certain my uncle was going to die. Philly threw several punches that missed as my uncle bobbed and moved his head, and then Tom landed a quick punch. They circled and I could see the rage in their faces, and their eyes: there was something like surprise in Philly’s, and an urgency in my uncle’s that I didn’t understand. They threw more punches and backed away, and both were panting. As they circled and sucked in air, my grandfather and several of the older men slid in between them, and I saw my grandfather put his arms around Tom, his back to Philly Clark.
A few yards away a general brawl was in progress, perhaps a dozen on a side, and a dozen more trying to break it up. They made their own dust cloud and it grew thicker and higher till some of them were obscured. It was thrilling to see and horrible, made worse by the familiarity of most of the combatants. Men went down and appeared again on their knees, shielding their heads. In the thick of it I could see Uncle Mike, his big arms pumping, and Uncle Dennis throwing sharp, quick punches. He was snarling, and as I watched, I saw Dennis pull a man down by his hair.
In the distance I heard a siren, and at the very rim of the roiling mass of fighters I saw the two heavy-set, hot-looking policemen who had been at the picnic all day. They were pulling men from the fight and pushing them away, but the fighters seemed to charge right back in, as though the police had no say in this matter. I saw one of the policemen lose his cap, and the other fell on the seat of his pants, looking annoyed.
The big fight seemed to feed on its own energy, and out near the pitcher’s mound, my grandfather and his companions were having difficulty keeping Philly and my uncle apart, and I wondered if grown men could fight in the hot sun forever. Then the park exploded.
I have always believed that a slender column of smoke hung in the air throughout the fight, that I’d actually seen it, as several others were later to claim. But when the cold light of reason strikes, I will admit that I couldn’t have seen it, that there was no column of smoke, at least not beforehand. What I did see, and hear, and feel, was the explosion, for explosion there was. Indeed.
The concussion rocked the park and screamed for attention, and to this day I’m not certain the fight would have been stopped but for this intrusion of noise and shock and smoke. It was the loudest single noise I heard in all my life and it froze the fighters in mid-assault—some of the younger ones had, like my uncle, served in Korea, many of the older ones in the two World Wars, and an explosion was never entirely good news—all heads turned just to the north, and now there was a column of smoke, and with it a rain of sorts, a dark noisy rain of objects and moisture that we could hear spattering against the leaves. I watched it in wonder, my consciousness still held by the violence of the fight and the danger to my uncles, but somewhere in my head, in that dark compartment where the arcania of boyhood is kept, a voice whispered “Rusty.” I looked at the smoke and realized we were witnessing Rusty’s personal celebration of Labor Day.
I heard someone ask, “What the hell was that?” and then half a dozen theories, including an explosion of natural gas and an old artillery shell.
Uncle Martin searched the sky, muttered that there’d been no siren, and I realized he believed us under attack.
Police cars came rumbling across the field and right onto the diamond, as if in official City of Chicago tribute to Rusty’s efforts, and half a dozen police officers waded in among the fighters to restore peace, though I believe Rusty had already done that. I saw two of the cops walk a few yards toward the woods, peering in the direction of the explosion.
My grandmother and Aunt Anne and I rushed over to where my grandfather stood with an arm over Tom’s shoulder. They looked like a fighter and his aging manager. A lone police officer had reached this part of the fray and Philly was loudly proclaiming his intention to finish it, though he made no move to get around the short, gray-haired cop. My grandmother was nearly undone by it all.
“Look at your face, Thomas, oh, God help us!”
Tom put a couple of fingers to his nose and shrugged. “It’s a bloody nose, Ma. I’m not gonna die.”
“Don’t tell me about bloody noses. There’s blood all over your face.” White with rage, she pawed at the mess of blood and dirt, muttered about “brawling in front of God and everybody,” said something about “shaming his family” and then took her revenge, every mother’s revenge. From nowhere she produced one of her small delicate handkerchiefs, wet it with saliva, and proceeded to mop up Tom’s face with spit, as a billion mothers have done since the days of caves and clubs and as they will continue to do till the Almighty bids them stop.
Tom winced and stepped back. “For Christ’s sake, Ma, I’m not ten years old.” He wiped the side of his face with his hand and looked at me.
“I’m sorry, kiddo, you shouldn’t see this. Grown men fighting like…animals,” and on the last word he thrust his chin in the direction of Philly Clark.
Both men looked worse-injured than they were: Philly’s cut rode the bridge of bone over his left eye and bled with the theatricality of a scalp wound. He also had a swollen lip, giving him a slightly monstrous aspect. Blood from Tom’s nose had been smeared all over his face, making it appear as though he had multiple cuts. Their sweat made mud of the infield dirt so that both men looked like coal miners.
More police officers came over to sort out the brawl and my grandmother tugged at my T-shirt.
“You don’t need to be listening to any of this nonsense. Go on and play with your friends. Find…find Matt, why don’t you.”
“All right.” I took a final look at my uncle, who was calmly cleaning his face with a handkerchief and listening to a policeman, and then went to find not Matt but Rusty. Alone, I made my way into the trees, keeping to the
path and moving in the direction I thought the explosion had come from. Eventually I found the spot.
Even if the path had not led me there, the stench would have told me where it was. I found myself in a small clearing, originally laid out as a campsite or a spot for a barbecue, with an ash-filled pit in its center. We had passed this spot on our earlier exploration, and found it held no promise of adventure. Set back from this camp area was—or had been—an outhouse, a small, foul-smelling wooden structure painted a dark red, with doors on two sides for the two genders. Inside each door was, or had been, a plain bench with a hole in the center, and below the hole was a deep, foul, wet pit filled from years of use with a festering brown stew.
Approximately a third of this little shack still remained, largely on the women’s side. I did not venture forward to inspect it, or peer into the dark hole, for I could see the contents of the old outhouse still dripping down from the tree limbs overhead, and the whole place, trees and all, smelled like a great outdoor toilet. A wisp of gray smoke still rose from the floor of the shack, and pieces of rotting, shattered wood had been spewed across the clearing.
If not for the rank smell, I could have imagined that I’d happened upon the aftermath of a great battle, replete with bombs, rocketry, and the roar of heavy cannon. All that was missing was life. Nothing moved in the clearing, and for a moment I wondered if Rusty had killed all the wildlife in the area. Then it struck me that there was no sign of my friend, either, and my heart dropped like a stone. I moved toward the shattered outhouse, holding my breath and praying that I would not find his lifeless body floating in the pit. As the fear grew in me, I called out to him.
In the Castle of the Flynns Page 31