Mason City Ballpark was as neat and orderly as the rest of the town. It was made from concrete and steel, not wood. They were putting so much concrete and steel into the dam, I bet they didn’t even notice a ballpark’s worth. It was 335 down each line, 380 to left-center and right-center, and 405 in straightaway center. Like I said, neat and orderly. If it was less interesting than a lot of playing fields I’ve seen, the company likely didn’t care.
The Beavers’ pitcher fit the park to a T. He was a fastball, curveball, changeup guy who couldn’t blow it past you but hit his spots. We nicked him for a run in the first, one in the third, one more in the fourth.
Meanwhile, Fidgety Frank mowed ’em down. With the herky-jerky windup and the leg kick and the waggle, he seemed as though he belonged in a tumbledown wreck of a place like Nat Park. But the Beavers couldn’t solve him. They were out in front on his changeups, late when he came in with the heat.
Their crowd got quiet. Little by little, they saw how well we played even if we looked funny. The only thing wrong with the stands was, they didn’t hold enough people. Official capacity was 1,500. They sold standing room for us, but we could’ve drawn more than we did if the park would’ve held ’em.
They batted for their pitcher in the bottom of the seventh. I don’t know whether the guy they brought in had a tired arm or was just no good, but we hit him hard. It had been 3-1. It ended up 8-2.
They were good losers. We and the Beavers all ate supper at the company cafeteria, and the company sprang for our food. I had a pork chop with stewed apples on top, mashed potatoes, and peach pie. It was better than what the coal-mining outfit dished out down in Madrid.
They lodged us overnight, too. Harv was happy about that. It partway made up for the smaller crowd. The rooms were … rooms. They were newer and cleaner than a lot of the places we stayed at, but I’ve lain down on plenty of mattresses that made my back happier.
They fed us breakfast, too. That was nice of them. A plump fellow in an expensive suit said, “You fellas may look … different, but you sure can show people how to play the game.” He meant may look weird, of course, but he did manage not to come out with it.
“Thank you, friend,” Harv answered. We got on the bus and headed west down to Wilbur, then west on US 10 for Wenatchee. The mountains climbed up the horizon as we went toward them. They’d grown tall by the time we got to town.
Apple orchards all over the place there. The Wenatchee Chiefs played for an apple-packing outfit, matter of fact. Their crates had a solemn chief with a feather headdress and buckskin shirt on the ends. They were all over town, used for everything from apples to auto parts to secondhand books. The team played in Recreation Park. It was at the south end of town, and held about 3,500.
That was the good news. The bad news was, it was 320 down the lines but only 350 to center. The unpainted wood fence was low, too. “Oh, my aching back!” Wes said. “What did I do to deserve this?”
“Daniel said, ‘My God hath sent His angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before Him innocency was found in me,’” Harv quoted. How much innocency an angel would’ve found in Wes, I can’t tell you. But I don’t know that about the Chiefs’ pitcher, either.
It was the kind of game you’d expect in such a silly little ballpark. We wound up taking it, 9-7. I threw a guy out at the plate from the warning track in left-center. I’d be prouder of the throw if it were longer, but it sure went straight.
And we headed straight out of town the next morning, early, bound for Bellingham.
* * *
US 10 went through the Wenatchee National Forest. More pines and firs and spruces than I’d ever imagined, let alone seen. I saw dryads flitting through the forest, too, looking for saplings to live in. There’s an awful lot of logging in Washington state outside the places where it’s against the law. Tree spirits without trees are as sad and desperate as people without jobs or houses. I don’t know what to do about that, or how much trouble it may brew down the road.
We went over Stevens Pass and down the other side. It’s only 4,000 feet, though—not half so high as the ones in Colorado. Where US 10 runs into US 99 outside of Seattle, we took the 99 north to Bellingham. And along the way I saw the ocean for the very first time. It was gray. It looked cold. But I saw it. In Oklahoma, I never reckoned I would.
Bellingham is a lumber town. I wouldn’t care to think about how many dryads that spent a few hundred years in a fir are trying to make homes in shrubs and rose bushes these days. The world’s hard on everybody—not just on people.
In Bellingham, I didn’t just see the ocean. I smelled it. Now that I’ve had that thrill, I almost wish I didn’t. It wasn’t what you’d call real clean.
I liked the Bellingham Chinooks’ uniforms. They had a salmon—a chinook is a kind of salmon, I found out—jumping over a baseball bat. They were different. Battersby Park, where they played, that was different, too. Never seen anything like it before or since.
The stands were fine. It held about three thousand, so it was a tad smaller than the ballpark in Wenatchee. But whoever laid out the field must’ve had his head on a slant. It was 290 down the left-field line, 350 to center … and 435 to right. It was shaped like a first baseman’s mitt, in other words.
Harv took one look and said, “Snake, today you’re a right fielder.”
“Makes sense to me,” I said. “Enough ground out there—you bet.”
Fidgety Frank scratched his head, staring out at the funny field. “You know how I pitched in that Spokane park?” he said. “Well, today I gotta turn that upside down and inside out.” I saw what he meant. He’d want the Chinooks’ left-handed hitters to pull to the long field. Righties, though, he’d work away so they’d hit to the opposite field.
You can always make your plans beforehand. Whether you can do what you want is another story a lot of the time. So is whether following your plan will wind up working out the way you hope.
Clouds blew off the Pacific. It was cool and damp. We’d left the dry, warm weather on the other side of the mountains. People came to the game anyhow. Most of them wore checked wool shirts, red or green or blue, and dungarees. For once, I didn’t sweat like a pig in my wool flannels.
When the home team took the field, one of those loudmouthed fans you run into sometimes bellowed out, “C’mon, Chinooks!” from behind their dugout. My head swung in that direction. He shouted again. He was a sandy-haired guy in his forties, dressed like a lumberjack. I didn’t know what that proved, though, since so many others there wore the same kind of clothes.
He whooped and hollered when they got us out in the first without giving up a run. In between the hollers, he drank beer. That was like putting gasoline in the engine. It kept him running.
Their third hitter clouted one out to right. But he didn’t hit it over that far-off fence, so I ran it down. The big-mouthed fan booed me. I felt like tipping my cap to him, but I didn’t.
When I came up to lead off the third, I bunted. I hadn’t tried that in a while. If you do it all the time, word will get ahead of you. They’ll play close and make it hard. I caught the Chinooks by surprise, though. Their third baseman didn’t bother throwing. He just picked up the ball. That loudmouth called me about half the names in the book.
He called me the other half when I scored after Azariah pulled one over the short left-field fence. It had a stretch of chain-link above the planking, but it still wasn’t high enough to stop cheap homers.
“Boy, that guy sounds like he knows you,” Harv said when old Leather Lungs wouldn’t shut up no matter what.
“And loves you,” Wes added. I laughed—more than he must’ve figured the joke deserved. But it tickled my funny bone.
The Chinooks got a run back in the fifth. The loudmouth did everything but bang on a big bass drum. They might’ve plated more, only I ran down a long line drive. The guy in the stand hadn’t used up all his bad names. He found some new ones, just for me.
It didn’t help. They tried a ninth-inning rally, but that fell short. We came out on top, 6-4. I ran in from right as fast as I could. I didn’t think the loudmouth would move real quick himself, not after all that beer, but you never could tell.
Everybody was staring at me as I hustled over by the third-base dugout. Wes and Eddie and Harv must have figured I wanted to punch out that guy. Not exactly. “Don’t go!” I yelled at him. “You hear me, Pa? Don’t you go!”
(XVIII)
He’d started up the steps, half a dozen rows toward the way out. Now he stopped and turned and looked me over. I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me. He’d never seen me with whiskers before (he had some of his own, too, but just the I-didn’t-shave-the-past-couple-of-days kind). And he’d been drinking all through the game, at least—I didn’t know how long a running start he’d had before it.
“Jack?” he said while people heading to the exit tramped past him. “Is that you, boy?”
“It’s me, all right.” Hearing my own name felt funny. The House of Daniel guys, they called me Snake most of the time, and I was getting used to it. Hearing Pa’s voice again, that felt stranger yet. It had all through the game. I’d known it right away, even if I hadn’t heard it for years. It’s not the kind of thing you’re ever likely to forget.
He started coming down the stairs, toward me. “What the devil you doing here, Jack?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. “I thought you were in California.”
“I was for a while, over near Eureka,” he answered. I didn’t know then where Eureka was; I’ve found out since. Pa went on, “Went up into Oregon, and then up here. Don’t quite know how I got to be a lumberjack, but I did. It ain’t a bad way to make some money, and there’s lots of chances for jobs.”
“If you say so.” I wondered how they liked him crocked in the woods. Because he would drink. I knew that. He’d been drinking at least since Ma died. Maybe before then, too—I can’t remember so far back. I asked him, “Have the day off today?”
He nodded. “Uh-huh—the whole weekend.” I’d forgotten it was Saturday. When you were on the road, each day blurred into the next. He went on, “Wanted t’come out an’ see the Chinooks play the House of Daniel. Never reckoned I’d be watching my own kid.” He eyed me. “You look peculiar with a beard.”
“It’s part of the uniform, like,” I answered. And it was, just as much as our spikes or the roaring lions on our shirts. We were the baseball team with the beards. The beards and the hair were what people knew us by.
From behind me, Eddie said, “This guy here is really your dad, Snake—uh, Jack?”
“That’s right.” I looked around. Half the team had gathered there. Having somebody they played ball with run into his old man out of the blue wasn’t something that happened every day, or even every week. “This is my pa, Clayton Spivey. Pa, these’re Eddie Lelivelt and Wes Petersen and Frank Carlisle and Amos Funkenstein.”
“How about that?” Pa said. “How’d you get to play on a hot team like this, anyways? I didn’t reckon you were that good.”
“Thanks a bunch,” I told him. He’d sure poured down enough so he didn’t care what came out of his mouth. Trouble was, that didn’t mean he had it wrong. I still wasn’t sure I was good enough to stick with the House of Daniel.
Harv came over, too, so I introduced him and my pa. Harv said, “After we clean up, we’re gonna have some supper. If you want to come along, Mr. Spivey, we’d be glad to have you.”
I kinda wondered about that; Pa wasn’t the sort who grew on you when you knew him longer. Before I could say anything, though, or even figure out what I should say, my father answered, “I dunno…” I understood what that little whine meant. I’d heard him sound that way when folks in Enid were dunning him. It meant he was busted, flat, broke, skint.
“I’ll spring, Pa,” I said.
Well, that put his nose out of joint. I might have known it would. “So you’re a rich man now with your baseball, huh?” he said.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And all the House of Daniel guys standing in back of me, they laughed, too. How could you do anything else? Nobody gets rich playing semipro ball. Nobody. Dang few—I mean dang few—make any kind of living at it. I knew how lucky I was to manage that much.
The laughs only made him huffier. I might have known they would. “I don’t aim to be any kind of bother,” he said. Even drunk, he was proud, in his way. Maybe I get it from him. I don’t know. How can you know something like that?
“Okey-doke,” I said. “Tell you what, Pa. I saw some kind of joint over on Girard Street, maybe a block from here. Let’s you and me go there by our lonesome. I can walk back to the boarding house after we eat. I know where it’s at.” Talking with him, more Oklahoma came out than it did with the team.
He finally decided that was all right. I cleaned up under Battersby Park and got back into my street clothes. Eddie took charge of my baseball stuff. That was nice of him. “Go on,” he told me. “How often do you get the chance to spend some time with your father?”
“It’s been a while, sure enough,” I said. “Now I have to work out whether I want to.”
Pa waited out front, near the ticket booths. He’d got hold of another bottle of beer from somewhere. He killed it when I came up to him, and tossed the dead soldier in a trash can. “Well, boy, let’s get going,” he said.
He ordered stuffed cabbage at that place I’d seen. I had liver and onions. He ordered a beer, too. So did I. The food came quick enough. It was … food. Not terrible, not worth remembering. He shoveled it in. He didn’t talk.
After a bit, I did: “How come, Pa?”
“How come what?”
“How come what?” That made me mad. “How come you went and disappeared? That’s how come what!”
He took a pull at his Olympia. “’Cause I couldn’t stand that stinking shack or that stinking town one more minute, that’s how come. Plain enough for you, sonny boy? You didn’t need me no more. You were old enough to get by on your own. You must’ve been, hey? You went and did it.”
I bit down hard on that one. Except ’cause he took all the money in the place, I hadn’t been any too sorry he was gone. Still … “You could’ve let me know where you went. Sent a CC message or had somebody write a card for you. Something.”
“Like you cared,” he said. I bit down hard on that, too. What was he, back in Enid? A no-account town drunk. I knew it. So did he.
One more time, though—still … “You’re my flesh and blood. You’re about what there is of it. And are you so much better off out here?”
That made him laugh. It was a nasty laugh, not one I cared to listen to. “Oh, you bet I am!” he said. “There, I’d been worthless Clay Spivey since I was twelve years old. Everybody had me tagged. Here, half the loggers are on the run from crap like that. And you’ve got your high and mighty nose in the air on account of I drink some? Oh, yes, you do—I can see it. But next to a lot of the fellas I crew with, I’m temperance. And you can take that to church, ’cause it’s the Gospel truth!”
He meant it. He was too sore not to mean it. “Lord help ’em, in that case,” I said.
“Lord helps him who helps himself.” He waved to the fella in the greasy apron behind the counter for another bottle of beer.
I’d wondered if he would want to know about what had gone on in Enid since he pulled up stakes. He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, he’d made a clean break. As far as he was concerned, he’d made a clean break with me, too. It was odd that we’d run across each other, and kind of funny, but that was all it was to him.
Was it that way to me? The longer we sat
across from each other, the more I saw it would have to be. “Well, I’m glad I got you here for a supper, anyways,” I told him: a last try.
“Yeah, you got me, and a hell of a git you got,” he said. It wasn’t the kind of father-son reunion they put in stories and films. I wanted it to be. Some of me did, anyhow. But it just wasn’t.
“Here.” I put money on the table for both of us. “I better get back to that boarding house. We’ll be heading … wherever we’re heading pretty early tomorrow mornin’.”
“Thanks,” Pa said. “I’ll do the buying next time we meet up.”
“Sure.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. I held out my hand. Pa shook it. I turned around and went on out. I haven’t seen him since.
* * *
I had a ways to walk before I got to the boarding house. Bellingham’s not the big city, but it’s no tiny little town, either. It’s the biggest place north of Seattle and the towns around there.
Because it was so far north, summer sundown came late. Sunlight still slanted across the sky while I mooched along. I wouldn’t have to worry about vampires jumping out at me, not unless I was walking the wrong way and had to waste a lot of time backtracking. And I wasn’t. That was good, because I had plenty of other things on my mind. One of those critters could’ve sunk his teeth into my neck before I even noticed he was around.
There were a lot of things I’d wanted to tell Pa: things I’d done, things I’d seen, things I’d thought, things I’d felt. But to tell him things like that, I needed him to be the kind of man who cared about them. I needed him to be the kind of man who didn’t walk out the door without telling me he was leaving.
He wasn’t that kind of man. He never had been. He never would be. He didn’t give a damn. He never was gonna give a damn. And I couldn’t do one thing about it.
To be fair, he didn’t look for me to give a damn about him, either. I wanted to, but how could I when he pushed me away as hard as he could without using his arms? There was nothing between us. There never had been, not since I was tiny. There wouldn’t be. It wasn’t over. How can something be over when it doesn’t start?
The House of Daniel Page 31