by Darryl Brock
“In the event of success,” he said coyly, “you could be sure I’d use any influence I might have with Caitlin.”
Well, there it was. The old commander was playing every card he held.
“I don’t want her influenced,” I said. “I just want a fair chance.”
“Then I’d say that to her,” he said easily. “If you agree to undertake the mission, the means for it will arrive tomorrow.”
I looked at him blankly.
He smiled. “When we win the match.”
Over his shoulder I saw a thatch-covered pavilion being decorated for the festivities. A painted sign read OLD GLORY BLOWOUT! Beyond the pavilion, on the level ground where we practiced, baselines were being marked out with crushed limestone. If there hadn’t been pressure on this country ball contest before, there definitely was now.
FIFTEEN
On the Fourth we woke to gunshots from the prospectors’ camp upriver. We’d heard their drunken whoops the last two nights, but until now no firearms. I hoped it wasn’t a tipoff to what the holiday might hold. Several of them, burly and bearded, showed up at our early-morning practice. Watching me align cutoff men on outfield plays, they voiced a few caustic thoughts on such fine-tunings of the game.
“We’re fixin’ to hammer your plowboy asses,” said the largest one, who turned out to be Dyson.
“What’s this?” another yelled, seeing Linc behind the plate. “Black Irish?”
Linc ignored him.
“Black nigger Irish!” Dyson said.
While the goldbugs exploded in har-hars at their keen wit, I caught Linc’s eye, and knew we had the same thought: It could be a long afternoon.
When Tim stepped to the plate for hitting practice, Dyson lost no time in commenting on how we were reduced to using “green sprigs.” I saw the boy signal Monohan for an inside pitch, and had an uneasy suspicion. Sure enough, Tim pulled the ball in a blistering hook outside the foul line that low-bridged Dyson and his men.
Oh, hell, I thought, let’s not start this already.
“Was that a-purpose, you shit-arsed sprat!” Dyson roared.
“Of course not,” I said before Tim could respond, walking quickly over to them. “We’re looking forward to a friendly contest.”
“ ‘Friendly contest,’ Dyson repeated in sissified tones. He nearly matched me in height and outweighed me by at least seventy-five pounds, some of it in his gut but a lot more in solid body mass. I saw a calculation in his eyes and sensed that he was thinking he could take me. I sighed inwardly. Did I put out signals or something? Why did I draw these idiots? “Now we’ve seen your mongrel nine,” he said, “how about doubling the stakes?”
I didn’t like that mongrel crack. I didn’t like Dyson. I especially didn’t like this situation, which held prickly reminders of my last ballpark fracas.
What would Sjoberg counsel?
“You’ll have to ask General O’Neill about that,” I told him. Soft chin. Soft eyes. Non-challenging tone. “We just play, we don’t set the stakes. Besides, we’d be crazy to do it since you don’t seem impressed by us—and we haven’t seen you at all.”
Dyson laughed scornfully, as if I’d been confirmed as a cream puff. “Afore long,” he promised, “You’ll see a lot more than you want.”
Already have, I thought, nodding cordially as he and his cohorts strode off.
Tim was in my face immediately. “Why’d you back down, Sam?”
I didn’t answer him directly, but called all of them together. “Look,” I said, “that was a useful preview. They’re gonna try to get our goats, take our minds off how we play, make it a slugging match one way or another. That isn’t our game, understand?”
Tim was staring at the ground. I suspected I’d fallen short in the hero department. Well, that wasn’t my problem.
“Understand … Tim?”
He gave a grudging nod.
“Lie down with dogs,” Tip McKee said, “and surely we’ll rise with fleas!”
It brought a laugh, which didn’t hurt just then.
After I dismissed them, I walked off with Linc. “You gonna handle the ‘nigger’ stuff okay?”
“Heard it all before,” he said. “If it’s words, that’s one thing. If it comes to be more, I’ll pick my time and go at ’em with everything in reach.”
“If it comes to that, I’ll be there with you.”
He nodded matter of factly. “Figured you might.”
In my previous life I’d attended my share of so-called old-fashioned Fourths, but none came close to O’Neill City’s Old Glory Blowout. In mid-morning, while antelope and prairie chickens roasted in cooking pits, the first contests got underway: foot races, broad jumping, horse-shoe tossing, wrestling, and a hilarious sack race won by Kaija and a nine-year-old girl. Singing and spelling competitions followed. Then came a half-mile horse race around a clump of willows, and back again. Tim asked to ride Mr. P., and I agreed. In a field of nine, he finished a respectable fifth.
I came face to face with Cait during a taffy pull of boiled-down sorghum. She looked like royalty in a green dress that set off her eyes.
“Morning,” I said.
“Yes.” She passed by with a rustle of fabric.
“Cait,” I said to her back, “this is ridiculous.”
She didn’t turn around.
By early afternoon the pavilion tables held breads and fritters and cakes, marmalade and rose-petal jams, berries topped with cream, dandelion greens, roasting ears, wild plums and grapes and mulberries and gooseberries and crabapples. Plus the roasted game and fish from the Elkhorn.
A contingent from Atkinson arrived with more food. The prospectors came soon after. They were noisy but reasonably cordial—we were feeding them, after all—and there were jokes about eating so much we wouldn’t be able to play. I’d told my players to load up after the contest; another meal would come that evening. The goldbugs showed no such restraint, and it wasn’t hard to tell that several had been drinking. Dyson didn’t say much but kept staring at me. I did my best to ignore him.
A cloud layer cut some of the sun’s intensity and a breeze stirred the air. Good conditions. As game time approached, the women pinned green ribbons to our sleeves and presented us with cotton caps they’d made, each bearing a shamrock, and so we took “Shamrocks” as our team name. The goldbugs dubbed themselves “Argonauts,” their one concession to uniforms being new rope belts to cinch up their jeans.
Dyson wanted all flies, even fair ones, counted as outs if taken on one bounce. It was a reversion to rules used twenty years ago but I readily agreed because I figured it might work to our advantage. We’d been practicing catching the ball in the air. The field was a nightmare of bumps and hollows; if they waited for bounces they might be in for surprises.
Dyson scoffed at the idea of General O’Neill as the solitary umpire, so we settled on a trio: the General, a prospector with an injured leg, and one of the Atkinson group, a man named Rhodes, who’d done some umping in the past.
“Who’s holding stakes?” I asked.
John O’Neill nodded toward Rhodes. “The Argonauts gave him dust and nuggets—and assay papers attesting to their value.”
“What’s he got of ours?”
“A note convertible to goods from our store at wholesale rates.”
A great deal for them, I thought, and a potentially crippling depletion of our stock.
The contest began at three. As I’d expected, it was wildly offensive. The Argonauts teed off on Monohan’s floaters and sent them deep into the outfield. Dyson hit one close to the river, a prodigious clout that must have traveled nearly 400 feet. Linc matched it an inning later, demonstrating that we could slug too—some of us. Mostly we did what we’d practiced: knocking “daisy-cutters” along the ground and letting the terrain and our opponents do the rest; at one point we had fourteen straight base runners.
In the field we backed each other up, hit our cutoffs, and tagged out a number of unwary Argonaut runn
ers; Linc was masterful at keeping pitches from going behind him; and Tim ranged over the field like Andy himself, stealing hits and drawing Dyson’s vocal attention.
Still, their slugging gave them an edge. After five innings we trailed by seven runs, 42-35. The crowd, comprising virtually every soul in the Irish settlements, quieted and John O’Neill’s confident expression faded as the Argonauts grew increasingly arrogant.
In the sixth, Linc gunned down two of them on steals of second, Tim applying the tag each time. As a rule the Argonauts didn’t slide but tried to bowl us over. Eluding them easily, Tim made a cocky twirl with the ball after the second tag. Dyson yelled something from the sideline.
“Don’t gloat,” I told Tim as he came off the field. “Win or lose, act the same.”
“Who wants to lose?” he retorted; the next was muttered but I heard it: “When’re you gonna do something so we win?”
I took a breath and said nothing.
Their pitcher, a hawknosed Hoosier fond of punctuating his windups with twangy remarks like, “Try this one for size,” started to tire as we continued to wait for balls to swat past their infielders. Our patience and good fielding gradually eroded the Argonauts’ lead.
In the bottom of the eighth, score tied 51-all, I singled past shortstop. Linc doubled me to third. Tim stepped to the plate to a chorus of expectant cheers. I looked for Cait in the crowd but couldn’t find her. She must be fearful that baseball would take her son as it had taken her brother.
Dyson gathered his men around him, apparently asking if anybody else could pitch. Finally he took the mound himself and glared in at Tim, who called for a low pitch. Which struck me as peculiar, since I knew he preferred the ball belt high. Dyson, having seen to his own discomfort that Tim could pull the ball with power, came in with a medium high outside pitch—to one of Tim’s favorite spots. He whacked it smartly into right field, and I scored with Linc right behind me. Suspecting from the boy’s smug demeanor that he’d been duped, Dyson scowled at Tim. Maybe it spoiled his concentration, for he laid a fat one in for our next batter, who laced it for another hit, scoring Tim—who, to my displeasure, made a big production of jumping on the plate and announcing his run—and we ended up taking the field in the top of the ninth leading 54-51.
Three outs to win.
It didn’t happen.
Monohan, feeling the pressure, lost his composure and his control. The Argonauts sandwiched two walks and seven hits around a single out. We trailed again, 56-54, with the bases loaded. Stalling, I went over to talk to Monohan and saw defeat in his eyes. If ever a secret weapon was needed, it was now. I called time and told Tim to warm up in the pitcher’s box.
“Think that snotnosed dickie bird’s gonna stop us?” Dyson taunted.
Wondering what a dickie bird was, I sent one of our subs to go fetch Tim’s mother.
“What for?” No older than Tim, the boy looked troubled. “Miz O’Neill don’t like Timmy playing ball.”
“Just fetch her,” I said. “Don’t tell her why.”
“She’ll think something’s wrong.”
“GO!”
A minute later Cait appeared, looking worried. As she took in the situation her eyes swung accusingly to me. With an emcee’s sweeping, open-handed gesture, I motioned at Tim: This is your boy’s moment! Later I would regret that bit of arrogance. The scene before Cait must have represented everything that threatened her.
But at least she didn’t leave.
My focus shifted back to the diamond as the Argonaut hitter stepped to the plate and waved his bat menacingly. I’d told Tim to mix his curveball with inside pitches. He tossed his first bender, and the Argonaut nearly fell on his back trying to get out of its way. The ball hooked over the plate; Rhodes intoned, “Warning on the striker!”
“He’s throwin’ a crooked pitch!” the hitter complained.
“What?” Dyson bellowed from where he stood on deck, hefting a bat that looked long as a wagon tongue. “A crooked pitch?”
Umpire Rhodes, stationed beside home plate, ignored him; he knew as well as I that the rules currently permitted a pitcher’s wrist snap.
The hitter bravely held his ground on the next offering, thinking it would also curve. It didn’t, and clipped him on the hand. In this era a hit batter didn’t get a free base. All the Argonaut could do for satisfaction was hop up and down and send a few curses Tim’s way. His mood didn’t improve when another curve was called a strike. Then, desperate, he swung weakly at a third bender and suffered the ultimate humiliation: a whiff.
Still arguing the curve’s legality, Dyson came to the plate. He posed in a threatening stance, bat aimed at Tim like a gun. Far from being intimidated, Tim actually grinned back at him for all the world like a young George Wright. Although I had to admire his nerve, the cocky grin wasn’t what I’d have recommended in those circumstances. Dyson looked homicidal as Tim gave him a steady stream of curves. Trying to atomize the ball, he fouled off a couple and finally squibbed a roller to me at first base. Tim had done the job better than I’d hoped; with only one out and the bases full, he’d stopped them.
“We’re still ahead of you ass-wipes,” Dyson jeered as he passed me on his way to the pitcher’s box.
He was right. It was our last ups. We trailed by two. I batted fourth in the inning; somebody had to get on for me to get to the plate. Tip McKee led off. I sneaked a glance at Cait to see if she was watching him.
She was, naturally.
I was conflicted, not wanting Tip to look too good—and also not wanting to lose the game. He swung hard and sent a scorcher back at Dyson. The big man snatched the ball out of the air with his big hamhock hands, which must have stung, but he gave no sign. He turned toward me with a smartass leer. One out. We had only two left.
“On the ground,” I urged the next Shamrock.
He sent a four-bouncer that their shortstop bobbled long enough for him to make first. Evidently the Argonauts were also feeling the pressure. Our next hitter came through with a seeing-eye single past third, putting Shamrocks on first and second.
And now I was up. Storybook situation. Score: 56-54. A home run would win it. Don’t think that way, I told myself. Drive the ball low. No need to be the hero. Linc’s up next. Just keep things going.
No taunts from Dyson now. Although I hadn’t hit for distance, the Argonauts hadn’t gotten me out all afternoon. Dyson’s first ball zoomed in high, though I had called for it low. Rhodes called a warning, which activated a ball count. Three more and I would walk. I signaled low again, wanting the ball where I’d golfed my previous hits, low liners virtually impossible for the barehanded Argonauts to deal with. The offering came in high.
“Two balls,” Rhodes called.
It happened again. The pitch sailed in too high; it took an effort of will on my part not to try to club it.
“Three balls.”
Did they really mean to walk me? Load the bases for Linc, who had powered some of his hits? Unlikely. Intentional walks were practically unknown in these times, and I doubted that Dyson had come up with such an advanced idea. The Argonauts were yelling that I was yellow-bellied, afraid to swing. Dyson’s strategy seemed aimed at tempting me to go after a bad pitch. Well, I’d take the walk if it came.
Everybody seemed to be yelling now, my teammates, the Argonauts, the crowd of settlers. An undifferentiated roar. My hands were sweaty. I stepped out of the box for a second and rubbed dirt on them. I told myself not to glance Cait’s way, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. She was looking away.
Deliberately not watching.
Stepping back in, I tried to put her out of mind, tried to concentrate on Dyson.
It didn’t work.
I felt a monumental surge of resentment at coming all this way for a woman who wouldn’t look at me; at being on a prairie in the middle of nowhere; at dealing with louts like Dyson. It seemed that I’d been thwarted at all turns, failed at everything.
The next pitch wasn’t quite as h
igh. Jaw clenched, I watched it coming, a fat target, down where I could extend my arms and drive it.
To hell with daisy-cutters.…
I torqued my hips and whipped the bat, grunting with the effort. Every ounce of strength generated by my body weight and work-hardened muscles seemed to explode through my arms into the bat and then the ball, which rocketed high and far.
The Argonaut’s left fielder was in frantic motion, legs pumping wildly as he raced down toward the river. Our runners were moving around the bases. All else seemed frozen and there was an eerie silence as every eye tracked the ball’s flight. I sensed at once that I wouldn’t have to run, but I went at full speed anyway, checking the ball’s orbit like everybody else.
It splashed in the middle of the Elkhorn.
The Argonaut fielder had halted at the water’s edge and was watching the ball bob downriver as I stepped on home plate. The Shamrocks swarmed over me, followed by jubilant spectators. We’d won, 57-56. The gold was ours.
“Sam’s tops!” Tim kept yelling. “He hit the ball out of the whole damn territory!”
Only later did I reflect that people then had never witnessed one of Bonds’s or McGwire’s mammoth shots. They’d never even seen golf balls driven prodigious distances. They’d never seen anything powered so far purely by human muscle.
It duly became legend, and Tim’s notion of the ball floating across boundaries was part of it: a man had hit a baseball clear out of the Territory of Nebraska.
At length I freed myself from exulting teammates and spectators.
Cait was gone.
Dyson was claiming loudly that they’d been cheated by Tim’s illegal pitches and that their gold should be refunded. When he got no satisfaction from Umpire Rhodes, he confronted Tim and demanded to see his father.
Linc and I saw it and moved that way.
“I don’t have a father,” I heard Tim say.
“Then you’re a goddamn mick bastard!” Dyson grabbed his arm to keep him there. “You think we’re gonna let you take our gold?”
Tim told him to go to hell.
Dyson promptly backhanded him.