by John Sayles
“How bout you, Chief?”
Big Ten takes a long time to answer, considering his options, and when he speaks he looks at Hod instead of the man in front of him. “They’ll stick me underground when I’m dead,” he says. “No need to push my luck.”
The deputy and the other man with a badge and the railroad bull all laugh at this, then the deputy puts the irons on Big Ten and takes him off to jail. The Indian doesn’t look back. They aren’t friends, exactly, but when you travel with someone for a distance—
The man whose badge is for the Ibex Mines leads Hod outside and off in the other direction.
“What’s your name, son?”
They are stepping over the shunt tracks and in between cars being shifted back and forth, the business of the yard continuing despite the threat of two hungry, jobless men stealing a ride on a boxcar. For an instant Hod considers giving his real name but then thinks better of it.
“Metoxen,” he says. “Henry Metoxen.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“Polish.” The headache is back now, worse than before, and he is having a hard time catching his breath. “We’re pretty high up, aren’t we?”
“This is Leadville, son. The Cloud City.”
There are lots of lights up on the hill they have started to climb, and from the flats off to the right Hod can hear music. They pass a little cemetery, crooked stones and crosses leaning into the slope, and he thinks of the Indian girl behind the school. He thinks of his mother’s lonesome grave back on the old man’s folly of a quarter section, the Mennonites shaving a little closer to it with their plows every year.
“You’ll make two-fifty a day—three dollars if you really can run a drill. First week goes to the deputy down there—that’s your fine.”
“Thought the silver kings all went bust.”
“We’re still pulling gold out of the Little Johnny, lots of it.” He indicates ahead of them. “This is Carbonate Hill—we’ll put you up in the company barracks here, charge a dollar a day.”
“Meals?”
“That’s your lookout.”
Hod wishes there was more air to breathe, and he made three-fifty back in Butte, but he’s done enough jail for a lifetime. The mine dick gives him a look as they climb.
“You a drinking man?”
Kansas was dry and his old man a temperance fiend and somehow that has stuck with him. “No sir.”
“You stay in Leadville,” smiles the man with the badge, “you’ll want to take it up.”
OUR “BOYS” AT CAMP
The game is friendly till the ladies arrive. The 12th are regulars, at least, though Sergeant Jacks is convinced their moundsman is a ringer, snuck in from the Atlanta pro team after the officers made their wagers. He has a smoking fastball and a wicked, late-hooking curve that has the right-handed batters back on their heels and popping up. It has stayed tight only because the boys he’s picked for the outfield, especially Scott in center, cover their ground at a gallop and rifle the ball to the proper base when the white team makes a hit. Private Coleman, who they call Too Tall, has been adequate in the box, but is starting to tire from whipping fastball after fastball over the batters’ slab.
“Don’t you have a change-of-pace pitch, son?” Sergeant Jacks asks him when he trots forward from second after calling time-out.
“Course I do,” the veteran answers. “I rolls the ball to the catcher.”
“What I thought. How’s the arm?”
Too Tall spits tobacco and works his shoulder a few times, cocking his head as if listening to something inside the muscle. “Won’t be able to lift her tomorrow,” he says. “But now she’s fine.”
Jacks nods and moves back to his position. They are down four runs to two, a runner on third and a single out. A couple hundred of the 12th are gathered along the first-base line cheering their batter, a big, sunburned boy with a dent in his nose, while an equal contingent of the 25th urge Coleman on from the third-base side. Colonel Burt and his rival sit together with some other officers and the sheriff from Lytle and other dignitaries on a little set of bleachers that has been set up, sipping whiskey from tin mess cups and enjoying the contest like plantation lords, while the rest of the cracker civilians over from town are either clumped behind home pulling for the whites or scattered in the outfield, moving out of the way or becoming obstacles depending on which team’s ball is in play. It is dusty as ever but enough breeze to keep the flies from settling on you. Jacks tries to spit but can’t make enough water.
The batter, overswinging, fouls the first two pitches off, and as they are playing the old rule there is no count against him. Coleman has been throwing for seven innings now, putting the mustard on every pitch, and it’s clear the white boys aren’t afraid of him anymore.
“Come on, Pitch,” Jacks calls, adding his voice to the infield chatter. “Throw that pellet past him!”
Coleman delivers high and wide for a ball.
The 25th was the first unit to arrive at the Chickamauga camp, helping to clear new roads in the park, to dig the near-useless wells. Then the other regulars started coming and finally the state volunteers with their swagger and their suspicion and their amateur officers. There are too many men here and not enough for them to do and if something doesn’t change soon the flies are going to win the campaign. Combat will be no problem, combat keeps them occupied, but this—a hodgepodge of units waiting for orders, regulars and volunteers all mixed together under the pines, their sentries challenging each other for the pure spite of it, Lytle a hellhole for the colored troops and Chattanooga, if you’ve got the time to get there, not much better. Missoula was pie, the town used to them, friendly even, cheering them onto the trains and telling them to be sure and come back. But the reception has cooled with every mile farther south traveled and they are still only to the very top of Georgia. Short of combat, of course, a ball game is always the best way to let off some steam.
Even better if you win.
Too Tall bounces one off the plate for another ball.
“Bear down, big man, bear down!” calls Jacks, taking a step back into the shallow outfield. Let the run score, just get the out.
It is then that the ladies appear, a good dozen of them with pastel dresses and parasols, a lane parting among the white spectators, chatting with each other as they walk without a glance to the field, confident that play will be suspended till they are settled. Too Tall just looks at the ball in his hand, rolling it around as if counting the stitches in the cover, and most of the others break out of their crouches and kick at the uneven pasture, waiting. But Dade at first base, who is from Rhode Island of all places, puts his hands on his hips and stands gawking at them like an idiot.
The tin cups disappear and the officers jump up to be gallant, smoothing their moustaches and brushing off the boards so the ladies may be seated. From the corner of his eye Jacks can tell that these aren’t camp followers or sporting gals, but the cream of whatever Chattanooga claims for society. He checks the sky for rain.
The umpire, a second lieutenant from Headquarters staff with a whimsical sense of what qualifies as a strike, waits until the last parasol is positioned before starting again.
“Let’s play ball!” he calls out. “And mind your language.”
Coleman puts a strike past the batter then, grunting as he releases the ball, and Jacks can tell he’s hurt. It’s the first time the whole regiment has been together in years, and each company has voted two men to make up the squad, forgetting that pitching is half the game. His only left-hander, Gamble, is in the sick tent with dysentery and Ham Robinson mustered out a week before the Maine blew up. The next delivery is slow and wide but the 12th man swings anyway, dribbling it foul off the top of the bat. The ball rolls dead at the feet of one of the young ladies in the bleachers, the others twittering as she picks it up and holds it as if it may bite her. Before any of the officers can relieve her of it that fool of a yankee first baseman Dade steps right up and plucks i
t out of her hand. It gets too quiet then. He is a pretty boy, Dade, buff colored with reddish hair, and he smiles to show the blond girl his gold tooth, tips his cap, and trots back to the field.
Nothing happens right away, but Jacks can feel a change in the air, like it gets on the Gulf in Texas before a big blow, backs stiffening among the local crackers behind home, an edge to the cheering from the men of the 12th standing on the sideline. Too Tall throws again, wincing, and Jacks doesn’t like the sound when the batter lays into the ball. He turns, expecting the worst, but there is Scott backed up deep in center, the boy waiting, waiting, then charging a few steps forward to catch the ball and winging it in on the fly, Jacks letting it sizzle past him to skip off the front of the mound and continue to the catcher so quick the runner is four feet from home when he’s tagged. Double out, inning over.
The whole regiment lets out a Comanche whoop then, slapping the Carolina boy on the back when he comes in from the field, sharing out a sack of oranges somebody has foraged. Water at the camp is not much for drinking, boiled and allowed to settle it still tastes like mud, so even hot from the sun the orange soothes his throat.
“I took something off it,” says Too Tall. “I knowed he’s gonna pop up.”
The pop-up would have been out of reach in any fenced ballpark Jacks has played in, but he leads off the inning and can’t deal with the pitching now. He digs in at the plate, splits his grip on the bat for control, and watches the white boy’s legs. His fastball still has too much pop to do much with, but his curve is a lot slower and starting to break earlier. In his windup for the curve he twists his hip and swings his lead leg across his body, almost stiff at the knee, while he bends the knee and lifts it high for the straight pitch.
Jacks waits for a curve.
“Come on, Sarge!” calls Cooper, not playing but plenty active on the sideline. “I got some serious paper on the line!”
Laughter from the men then. There is no cash left in the camp, soldiers writing “checks” to each other in their card games and charging what little there is to buy at the colored canteen against next month’s pay. Jacks waits out two fast ones, a strike and a ball.
On the next throw the hurler keeps his lead leg stiff and Jacks steps back while he’s still in motion, waiting on the ball then slapping it hard between the shortstop and the third baseman.
“Atta go, Sarge! Runner on board!”
The pitcher has a good quick-throw to first and has almost caught them napping a couple times. Jacks hasn’t stolen a base in ten years and stays close to the bag while Curtis strikes out on a pitch in the dirt. Dell Spicer who married the Blackfoot gal back in Montana comes up then and swings late on the first pitch, slicing it just fair of the first-base boundary that has been laid down with lime. It gets lost in the spectators, who complicate things by trying to help, and Jacks ends up on third with Spicer standing up at second. The umpire makes them both move back a base, claiming interference. Jacks knows it will do no good but needs to make a show for the boys, calling time and stomping over to complain.
“If they hadn’t grabbed it, it would’ve rolled for a triple!”
The umpire is in military uniform. He taps his second lieutenant’s bar. “All decisions final.”
Jacks returns to second with the white side of the field catcalling after him. Horace Bell from B Company is up now, the swiftest of their runners but not much with the bat. Jacks sees the 12th infield playing back, and signals for a bunt.
“Good look now!” he calls, catching Bell’s eye and tugging twice on his cap. “Wait for your pitch.”
But the curve snaps in on his hands and hits the neck of the bat before he can pull it back, popping up easily to the catcher.
Jacks calls time again and has them wake up Sergeant Lumbley, who has been snoozing in the shade under the bench. Lum can’t run any more on account of the bullet he took in the knee during a scrap in Bozeman, but he can grit his teeth and march the boots off most of the boys. And with a hickory club in his hands, well—
The big sergeant steps up to the plate, a pattern of field grass dented into one side of his face, squinting sleepily and looking around the bases. He hasn’t been awake enough to know what stuff the pitcher has got, but with Lum it’s never mattered much.
“Strike this darky out!” hollers one of the locals and Lum turns to stare at him as the first pitch sails over for a strike. The crackers laugh.
Lum turns his sleepy gaze back to the pitcher then and knocks the next one over the left fielder’s head and it just rolls and rolls, rolls so far that two runs score and he is able to quick march all the way to third before they get the ball back in. Jacks sends a runner to take his place and Lum returns to the bench, rubbing his eyes.
“We ahead or behind?” he asks.
“Tied.”
“What inning?”
“Top of the eighth.”
“Damn.” He looks up at the sun. “This day done slip by me.”
Shavers bounces out and they take the field, Jacks walking out next to his pitcher.
“Can you do this?”
Too Tall spits tobacco. “I’ll keep it low.”
The first batter up for the 12th is a pinch-hitter too, a long-limbed drink of water who has been corked black wherever his skin shows out from the uniform. The crackers behind the catcher think this is a riot, and the boy coons it up, dragging the bat to the plate, dangling his loose limbs like rubber, turning to doff his cap, revealing a shock of yellow hair, and bow to the ladies who cover their mouths as they giggle.
“Send one to the moon, Rastus!” calls the sheriff through cupped hands.
“I sho’ly do mah best, sah!” he answers, bugging his eyes wide. He walks with his buttocks stuck out and arched high, and waggles them to great amusement as he settles in at the plate.
“Send me the sauce, Boss!” he calls to Coleman.
It is bad enough down here in this shithole Georgia not knowing if there’s going to be a war or not or if there is will they be allowed to go and wearing the damn woolen tunics in this heat while you drill and then what’s supposed to be your own people who you are fighting for treating you like dirt every time you wander off the reservation.
Jacks sees it coming.
Jacks sees it coming in the way Coleman holds his body. In the way he grips the ball, but he just stands at his position and says nothing.
Too Tall sends one upstairs and the blackface boy hits the dirt.
It is dead quiet for a long moment.
“Ball one!” calls the second lieutenant, and gives Jacks a look.
The crackers and a good number of the boys from the 12th are screaming as he walks to the mound this time, faces red, a few stepping across the lime onto the infield to make their threats. He hears nigger this and nigger that, something about when the sun goes down. The 12th are regulars, a good outfit, but the pastel ladies are here now and it changes everything. Both the colonels are standing up in the bleachers, looking concerned.
Jacks takes the ball from Too Tall. “You don’t really have nothin left, do you?”
“Spose not,” the pitcher says, turning to spit tobacco, face a mask as the crackers shout. “If I still had it, I’d of tore that boy’s head off.”
“You walk straight for the middle of our fellas over there, keep your eyes to yourself.”
“I can get these bastards out.”
“You done enough today, Trooper. Nice job.”
The private walks extra slow to the waiting wall of blue shirts, tucking his glove under his arm and seeming not to notice his life is being threatened by the mob on the other side. Jacks waves for Hooks to go in at center, and brings Scott in to take the mound. The word is that the Carolina boy can throw it some, and at this point he wishes Colonel Burt would step down and run the damn team like he did when they played the railroaders in Missoula.
“Get us through this inning alive,” Sergeant Jacks says to Scott as he hands the ball over, looking him hard in the ey
e. “You know what I mean.”
The boy, Royal is his name, gives him a big grin. “Sure thing, Sergeant.”
He takes his time getting ready, strolling over to say something to Corporal Ponder at third base and giving him his glove. Ponder trots to the bench, whispers something to the one they call Mudfish, and returns with a different one. The crowd, impatient, are shouting for action as Scott puts this one on. He winks to the second lieutenant.
“My pitching glove,” he says.
He asks for a couple warm-up throws then, which brings a new howl of protest from the white side, and proceeds to out-coon the batter, windmilling his arm in an elaborate windup, catching the return throws behind his back like the boys do when they’re just fooling among themselves. The white folks aren’t sure what to make of it, and neither is his own side, but the burned-cork boy looks a little embarrassed now, waiting to take his turn.
“Batter up!” calls the second lieutenant. Jacks crouches and pounds his glove.
Scott rears back and throws hard overhand—only he doesn’t let go of the ball, instead wheeling off the mound and striding over to the bench, the 12th men and the locals catcalling again as he gets his original glove back from Mudfish.
“Sorry, sir,” he calls to the umpire as he takes the mound again. “Just didn’t feel right.”
The minstrel boy digs in, looking pissed off to have the attention of the crowd pulled away from his antics.
“You aint gonna need a glove if you’ll throw me that thing,” he calls. “You gonna need binoculars to follow where it’s goin!”
“Comin right up,” smiles Scott, and goes into his windmilling wind-up.
The pitch he lobs in is so fat Jacks could run to the sidelines, grab a bat, and still get to the plate in time to hit it. The white boy in the blackface takes a mighty swing, connecting with it square over the plate—but instead of a crack of wood there is a heavy, soggy THOOMP!, the ball flying apart into a hundred little bits that spray outward like a fireworks explosion. Jacks is hit on the shoulder with a piece of it, a wet scrap of orange, the peel made white with lime from the basepaths.