The Southpaw

by Mark Harris

  “I brung you a little something,” he said, and he give me a package all wrapped up, and I thanked him, and then he wished me luck about 9 times whilst I got the car started, and 1 minute later I was off and rolling. I done 75 clear to Perkinsville, parking the car in the slot in the depot that Gordon Heffel said was mine as long as I was gone. Gordon is the station master, a great Mammoth fan and a great personal friend of both me and Pop.

  Chapter 8

  ON THE train between Perkinsville and New York I was dead from hunger and the diner shut tight. I would of give 10 dollars for breakfast right about then. Everybody was asleep all up and down the isles, slumped over in queer positions, and the man I was next to was grumbling away and adding up a lot of figures out loud until finally he woke and asked me where we was, and I told him we was about 30 minutes out of Perkinsville. “Where the hell is that?” he said.

  “I guess you never heard of the Perkinsville Scarlets,” I said.

  “Sure I did,” he said. “I suppose you are 1 of their players.”

  “I used to be,” I said.

  “I could of guessed it,” he said. “You look like a ballplayer.”

  “I am a pitcher,” said I.

  We talked for a long time, and I suppose I told him my whole life history the way I been writing it here, though quickened up a good bit, right down to that very morning, and he asked me what was in the package Aaron give me. I clean forgot about it, and I reached up and took it out of my coat pocket.

  In the package there was a money belt. It was made of waterproof leather with a zipper down the middle, and inside the zipper there was 5 bills of 10 dollars each, all green and crisp. He said I ought to put the belt on, and we went back in the washroom. There was a gang of men there, standing at the sinks in their undershirt, and this fellow give me a big build-up and told them I was going down to Aqua Clara to play for the Mammoths. Some of the men turned and looked at me, and 1 of them glanced me up and down and asked me if I did not think I was too undergrowed to get anywheres in baseball. We all got a good laugh out of that, for I was about twice as big as him and still growing. I could of stuck him in my pocket. Then this other fellow showed the belt around, and they felt the material and said it was the best, and I pulled up my shirt and strapped it around my middle, and they all admired it, and a number of them asked me if I was really and truly signed to a Mammoth contract. I did very little talking. This other fellow chattered away, telling them my life history like I told it to him. We had breakfast, and pretty soon we was under the tunnel and in Grand Central, and we said goodby, and he said he would look for my name in the papers, and I said no need to look too close, for it would be up in the headlines. Then he went 1 way and I went another and I have not saw that wretched bum since.

  I shuttled across to the west side and down to Penn Station. I had a layover of about 2 hours, and I checked my bags and went across Seventh into the building where the Mammoths have got their New York office. The office had a glass door with a lot of names wrote on it that I never heard of before, and I went in and seen a girl typewriter, and she smiled at me, and I said, “My name is Henry Wiggen,” and she said, “Yes, Mr. Wiggen. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just come to see what the office looked like.” I looked around. There was a big collection of pictures on the wall, a few baseball players but mostly a lot of men all dressed up sitting around the conference table, and there was a date wrote under each. The typewriter got up and disappeared out a back door, and soon she come back with a man, and he said, “Can I be of some help, Mr. Higgens?”

  “Wiggen,” I said.

  “Can I be of some help?” he said.

  “I was just looking,” I said. “I am Henry Wiggen.” He give the typewriter a look of puzzlement, and she give him 1 back, and I figured they did not catch the name, and I told them again, and the man asked me what my business was, and I said I was a baseball player. “It is funny I do not strike no bell in your head,” I said, “for you have just signed me on. I am on my way down to Aqua Clara.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Of course, there are a great many young men.”

  “But there is only 1 of me,” I said.

  “That is undoubtably true,” he said, and he give the typewriter another look, and she begun to giggle. The man did not giggle. But he stood there like he was about to bust out laughing, and I said to them, “I would like to know what the joke is all about if you 2 clucks would have the common ordinary decency to tell me.”

  “There is no joke,” said the man.

  “Then why in hell are you laughing?” I said. “Does your underwear itch?”

  “My underwear does not itch,” he said. “Nothing itches, and I ain’t laughing,” and now the girl begun to giggle louder and the man got all red in the face. “The reason I am laughing,” said the man, “is this,” and he went over to the wall where there was 3 green cabinets, and he begun to slide some drawers out as far as they would go, and he run his hand up and down the papers in the drawer. “Records,” he said. “Every 1 of these papers is a record on some kid that thinks he is another Joe DiMaggio or another Honus Wagner. They are just names. Your name is somewhere amongst them. How do we know who you are except just a name? You are but another name.”

  A cold chill went through me. It was like somebody opened me up and slid a long icicle in and sewed me over, and I did not say another word, but I turned and went out of there and down the elevator and in the street.

  I got my bags and got on the train, and soon she started, getting away without hardly so much as a lurch, and then we was in the sunshine and out of New York. I craned my head around and looked backwards at the city, and the buildings was all silver and misty in the sun. I watched a long time, and then the city begun to sink behind, and I knowed there would be a time when you could go in that city and go up in any of them buildings and collar any 10 people you meet and ask them, “Who is Henry Wiggen?” and 9 times in 10 they would know, even though now I was nobody, and the farther we went the nearer I was coming to the dream I dreamed all my life from the first time I seen Pop pitch a base-ball. We was barely in Jersey, and yet I was excited, and all around there was houses and people, and I felt sorry for the people, for they was not going anywheres. They was stuck. And I was on the move and off towards the bright life, and I felt like life never been life a-tall, but just some sort of time of waiting, and now it was beginning, and all the past was dropping back at 70 miles an hour and maybe more, all washed away out of my sight and out of my remembrance.

  I ate 2 steaks in the diner and a heap of fried potatoes and pie and 2 bottles of milk through a straw, and I give the waiter the last dollar bill from the open part of my wallet where I kept the small stuff, and I told him who I was and where I was going, and he claimed he was a pitcher himself in his college days.

  I changed trains in Washington, and it begun to grow dark in Virginia, the whole country spreckled with lights, and it was about now that my money begun to run out except for what I had in my belt. I guess I did not figure it right when I started, or else I spent it too much in 1 place. I had forgot that meals was so high on the trains, and then on top of that I was tipping just about everybody I set eyes on. A fellow in the washroom said you got to tip them, for that is the way they make their living, and I said I did not mind tipping so long as I had the money, and he said he did not like tipping noways but did not see how to get out of it.

  Still and all it sometimes went too far. That night they grabbed a hold of my shoes and shined them up. I never asked them to, and besides they had a high polish on them to begin with. Then just about every time we stopped for a few minutes I would slip my coat on and go down on the platform for a breath of fresh air, and they would come along with a whiz broom and brush me off with 1 hand and hold out their hand with the other, and I would plunk down 50 cents. When my money begun to run out I would plunk down only a quarter. Pretty soon I was down to giving out dimes, and then they stopped brush
ing me off altogether.

  I loaned my last 5 dollars out of my wallet to the girl in the bunk below. I was just about dropping off to sleep when she stuck her hand in through the curtain and shook me awake and asked me did I have a match. I told her I did not smoke. I said she could probably get a match from the porter for no more then 50 cents or a dollar. She said she did not wish to bother him. I said he was getting paid for the bother, and I was not, and I buckled up the curtain again and started back to sleep. She went and got a match somewheres and about 15 minutes later she woke me again, saying she was hungry, and I told her she come to the wrong place. “All I want is a sandwich,” she said, “but I seem to have run out of money.”

  I said I would loan her a little if she would make herself scarce and let me get some sleep, and I give her 5, which was all I had except a couple dollar bills and some change and what was in the belt, and she wrote down my name and address, saying she would send the money, and by morning she was gone. The porter said she got off in North Carolina.

  These porters are mostly good fellows, though liars. They are full of a lot of chatter about how many different colleges they been to and how many degrees they have got. To hear them tell it we have got more educated people riding around in sleeping-car washrooms then there is at Harvard and Yale lumped together. In the morning the porter brung me my shined-up shoes that didn’t need it in the first place, and he give me a big line of cackle, hoping I had a good night in the sack and what a beautiful day it was, and I give him a quarter.

  It seemed like overnight winter had faded out of the picture, and spring had come, and spring always sets my heart a-beating. The snow was gone off the ground and we was somewhere in North Carolina, and there was buds on the trees and barefoot kids outside the window, and brooks and streams was bubbling along, not all froze over like back home this time of the year. You could fairly smell it. In the diner I sat by the window and looked out at the spring that had come so sudden, overnight, and I could smell it even over the smell of the food, which is saying a good deal because I have got a good nose for food, and I could hear sounds like the sound of people cheering and the chatter of the infield and the voice of the umpire and the thump of the ball in the glove.

  But I did not let even the spring get in the way of breakfast, and I ate up and paid for it with the last of my dollar bills, and the waiter said to me, “It looks like winter is over,” and I give him 50 cents.

  I went back through the cars to my place, and I sat there and looked out the window, and the more I looked the greener it become, and the more like true spring, and it must of been somewhere in the middle of the morning when I seen the first baseball of the year. It was in a town, and I guess a big 1, for we slowed some, and it was off in a sandlot close by to a schoolhouse, and there was an old rickety backstop full of holes, and there was a kid with a bat in his hands, and another kid throwing, and the thrower throwed and the batter swung and the ball went up in an arc behind where second base would be when the kids laid out their diamond later in the year. There was a lad behind second, and you could see by the way he run that the earth was soft, and you knowed he would not catch the ball because his mind was on his running, and he dropped it like I knowed he would, and then the train whooshed on and out of sight.

  That was the first time I ever seen kids playing ball from a train. I have saw many since, and you always think when you see them that maybe right there before your eyes is some immortal of tomorrow, for 1 of the beautiful things about the game is that the immortals rise up from nowhere, and you think about it every time you see kids on a sandlot.

  I kept a sharp eye out, but I did not see any more sandlots that morning, and about 11 I begun to make plans for lunch. I went back in the washroom and unloosened my shirt and unstrapped the money belt and took it out and stuck my shirt back in my pants.

  There was an old fellow sitting there on a leather seat with a cigar in his mouth, and he watched me the whole time. “I guess you ain’t the type that believes in taking chances,” he said.

  “It ain’t that,” I said. “It was give to me as a present by a friend back home. As long as I had it I figured I might as well use it as not.”

  “I do not blame you,” he said. “The world is full of thieves.” He set fire to his cigar and puffed a big blue cloud and sat back like he had said something real smart. “Everybody and their brother is crooked,” he said. He looked me through and through like he was waiting for me to give him an argument.

  “You are cockeyed,” I said.

  “I have been told the same thing before,” he said.

  “Then it is a wonder you are not yet wise to yourself,” I said.

  “Yes,” said he, “I suppose it is a wonder.” He puffed 2 or 3 more times on his cigar. It smelled like the St. Louis stockyards in August, and I told him so, and he took it out of his mouth and looked at it and let it die. “No doubt you are the ballplayer,” said he.

  “How did you know?” I said.

  “I sit here and keep my ears clean,” he said. “Since yesterday afternoon you have told about 2 dozen people that you are a ballplayer on this train. That is how I know. But you are not a top-flight ballplayer yet.”

  “I will be,” I said.

  “When you are a top-flight grade-A ballplayer you will not go around telling everybody,” he said.

  “You remind me of someone I know,” I said, thinking of Aaron Webster, for he reminded me of Aaron, sitting there like everything there was to know in the world he was telling it to you now. I paid him no more mind. I went over to the sink and took off my coat and hung it up, and I hung the belt over the coat and washed my hands and face, and he sat there with the dead cigar in his hand, and he watched me. I could feel him watching me, and I said, “What in hell are you studying me for?”

  “I am just wondering why you have got a money belt if you do not know no better then to hang it on a hook and then bury your eyes in soap and water,” he said.

  “Why not put the cigar back in your mouth?” I said. “I can stand the smell better then the gab,” and he lit up and stuck it back in. Then I finished washing and dried off and unzipped the zipper of the belt and reached in. There was no money there.

  My jaw dropped halfway to my stomach and everything begun to reel around, and it seemed like the train had suddenly took off from the tracks and started upwards to where the air was thin and you could not breathe. Things revolved and took on unusual shapes like in them mirrors in the amusement park in Queen City, and when they settled down again the old fellow was looking up at me, and I screamed at him, “Put out that damn cigar!” and he went over and run water on it, and it sizzled and went out. “Somebody has stole my money,” I said. “There was 5 bills here of 10 each.”

  He was very calm. I guess it is easy to be calm when it is somebody else’s money. “When did you last have it?” he said.

  “Between Perkinsville and New York,” I said, and I knowed right away who it was that took it.

  “That is a big area,” he said. “There is about 10,000,000 thieves all concentrated in along there. Have you got any more money?”

  “I have got some change,” I said. “I suppose I could send a wire home.” The old fellow got up and put a penny in the machine and brung me a cup of water, and I drank it and soon begun to feel better. “What about my meals?” I said.

  “You will only miss 2 meals,” he said, “for we will be in Aqua Clara this evening.”

  “2 meals!” said I. “Maybe a skinny old gent like you can live all day on cigars made out of low-grade manure, but I cannot.”

  “Have you not ever gone without 2 meals?” said he.

  “No,” said I, “and I do not plan to begin.”

  “Well,” said he, “come along with me and I will fix you up,” and I said I could not dream of eating off a stranger, but he argued some, and I give in pretty quick I guess, and he bought me lunch and then again supper, and he give me an envelope with his name and address wrote on it for me
to send him back the money in.

  But I lost it and never mailed it, and I suppose he thinks I am a thief like the rest. The last I seen of him he was sitting by the window smoking his cigar when I got off the train that night at Aqua Clara.

  Chapter 9

  THE camp was like a dream. It was night, and I could not see it too well, yet I could feel how big it was, and how it stretched away towards the beach. The moon shone down, and I could see the flat land beyond the barrackses where we was all to sleep, and the next morning I could see that the flat land was all baseball diamonds, 1 after the other as far as the naked eye could reach.

  I walked clear through Aqua Clara when I got off the train. It was quiet, and I did not see many people on the street, and finally I come to the camp according to the instructions in the letter. It was an air field for the Army during World War 2, and then the Mammoths bought it from the Army, but it still had the fence around it the way they do to keep the spies out and the soldiers in, and there was signs directing you to the main gate, and I followed the signs, and there was a guard at the gate. “What is your business?” he said. He shone a flashlight in my eyes.

  “I am Henry Wiggen,” I said.

  “Are you a ballplayer?” he said. “Leave me see your letter.”

  I took out my letter and showed it to him, and he checked me off on a list and told me I was in Barracks Number 10, Bed 5. “Ain’t anybody showed up yet?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “There is 1 n—r. He is in the same barrackses as you.”