by Ed Gorman
“I’ve learned some things, May. I really have.”
The door slamming behind him might have been the blast from a shotgun.
Everybody in the bank turned to stare.
“I’d better get back,” May said.
Les nodded and smiled good-bye.
He watched May leave the bank, recalling so many good times they’d shared, and then his attention went back to the door that had just slammed.
Clinton Edmonds’ door.
Only Edmonds hadn’t been the one to slam it.
Byron Fuller had.
***
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Clinton Edmonds demanded when Byron Fuller burst into his office and literally hurled the door back against its frame. Two sepia-tinted photographs, one of President Arthur, the other of Clinton Edmonds himself, tilted to the side from the force of Byron’s entrance.
Clinton held a fountain pen poised above the ledger he was working on.
Clinton said, “And just what the hell do you mean coming in here three hours late without a tie and smoking a pipe?”
Byron said, “Put your fountain pen down.”
“What?” Nobody had spoken in such a tone to Clinton Edmonds in longer than thirty years.
“I said, put your fountain pen down. I want you to hear every damn word I'm going to say to you.”
“Have you gone crazy?”
"No, sir,” Byron said, swelling his chest and exhaling pipe smoke like a dragon, “I’ve gone sane.”
And with that he ripped the fountain pen from Clinton Edmonds’ hand and proceeded to tell the man what he thought of him.
***
Neely stank by the time he reached town.
He found a small wooden shack where you could have a bath for 15 cents and a shave and haircut for the same amount.
Finished with that, he went over to a store named E. P. Van Valkenburg’s and bought himself a new shirt for $1.10 and new trousers for $3.20. He changed right there and threw his old clothes away. He was in a celebratory mood.
Then he went looking for a place where he could set up the meeting tonight between Black Jake Early and T.Z.
A visitor to the city could easily tell that tomorrow was the Fourth of July. Flags flew from what seemed every possible angle and red-white-and-blue bunting seemed to envelop the entire town. In Greene Square, in the center of the business district, workmen were setting up a big bandstand and speaker’s platform for tomorrow’s ceremonies.
Neely had to go three blocks north of the business district, up by where water poured over a dam and smelled of fish. From here you could see an ice refrigeration plant where slabs of ice were swathed in straw and sawdust and blankets so they would not melt during the summer heal. Even though this was right in town, there was an open area where anything could happen and not necessarily be seen. Neely had found his place.
He decided to go have a beer before he hunted up Les Graves and got the combination. He had three beers instead.
***
“Have you ever seen Susan’s hands twitch?”
“Just what the hell are you driving at?”
“I am,” Byron Fuller said, “telling you that you’ve ruined the lives of your wife, your two sons and that you’re doing your best to ruin the life of your daughter. And that I damn well won’t let you ruin her life, Clinton! I won’t!”
By now, Byron punctuated several of his points by slamming his fist on Edmonds’ desk.
“Her hands twitch, Clinton-you know what I’m talking about.”
“She has a nervous condition."
“Yes, and you’re the cause of that condition.”
Edmonds came up from his chair suddenly and just as suddenly his hand arced through the air and caught Byron on the cheek.
The slap sounded worse than it felt.
“I don’t take this kind of insolence from any man,” Edmonds said. Touching his cheek, Byron said, “It’s time you face the truth, Clinton. You’re a miserable bastard who can’t quit feeling sorry for himself that he was born poor-and you’ve spent your whole life taking that out on everybody around you.”
“I’d say being born poor is better than being raised a pampered mama’s boy, wouldn’t you, Byron?”
Edmonds’ slap had not raised color on Byron’s face but his words did.
“I’m well aware that I’ve got some growing up to do,” Byron said. “But I’m not the issue here. You are.”
“My family is my own business.”
“Not when Susan is involved.”
Edmonds looked at him sharply. “Do you think I don’t know what’s going on? That I don’t know what happened between you and Susan? She’s going to Omaha next week. And she’s called off her plans to marry you.”
But Byron was getting angry again. “Do you know that a part of her really hates you, Clinton?”
For a shocked moment, Edmonds’ face registered pain. “You’re a damn liar. My children know that I occasionally have fits of temper, but they certainly don’t hate me.”
“Don’t they, Clinton?”
“You’ll get the hell out of here. Permanently.”
“I need to clear out my desk.”
Edmonds’ face was red with fury and mottled with age. He looked ancient and forlorn. “You do that some other time, Byron. Right now I want to see you walk out that front door.”
The ecstatic mood of his high, pure anger was gone now. Byron supposed he appeared just as depleted as Clinton. “I just want to say one more thing.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t have to be miserable, Clinton. Nobody gives a damn about your upbringing.”
“Just get out of here, Byron.”
Byron stood by the door a moment and then he said, “I still love Susan. I’m going to try to talk her out of leaving.”
But Edmonds seemed lost now in his own torments. He wasn't listening. He had turned inward and sadness had replaced his bluster. Seeing Edmonds-the blustering, swaggering Edmonds-melancholy was almost frightening.
For all the anger he’d brought in here, Byron now felt at least subtly ashamed of himself. Perhaps there had been other ways to handle this- To tell a man that his own family hated him-
“Clinton,” Byron said, “I shouldn’t have said-”
Then Edmonds’ temper returned. “Don’t be a pansy, Byron. If you came in here to call me a sonofabitch, then call me a sonofabitch and don’t apologize.” He flung a hand toward the door. “Now get out of here.”
Byron started to say something more-but what more was there to say-and then he left.
Quickly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
You could hear the train carrying the Sterling baseball team coming half a mile away and it wasn’t just the usual sounds of the train engine, either.
There was a band on board that train and it played as festively as if it were New Year’s Eve.
More than four hundred people encircled the small frame structure of the Cedar Rapids depot, looking down the long shining stretch of tracks.
There were a lot of questions these spectators wanted answered. Was the average size of the Sterling player really six foot three and one hundred and eighty pounds? Did their pitcher, Fitzsimmons, really possess the operatic voice Sterling sportswriters always wrote of as “charming the birds from their nests in pure ecstasy?” Did the Sterling manager, Mike (“Mad Mike”) McGee, really keep a small firearm tucked inside his belt in case an umpire made an exceptionally bad call?
You could not help but want to know the answers and that was why so many had turned out today.
To see a team that had come to possess, in the common mind, the glow of legend.
The train pulled into the station with the band playing “Camptown Races” in so boisterous a fashion your toes could not help tapping in time.
On the way over to the depot, May had slipped her arm through Les’s.
They stood now, still arm in arm, toward
the back of the crowd, where most of the Cedar Rapids baseball team could be found.
“They’ve got a pretty good band,” J. J. Deamer, the center fielder, said. He said it with a certain note of suspicion in his voice, as if the music revealed something about Sterling’s baseball prowess.
Elmer Novak, the second baseman, clapped Les on the back and said, “Yes, but they don’t have our Les.”
“You really think Mad Mike McGee actually carries a gun?” asked young Moray Uridel, the shortstop.
Novak laughed. “Don’t worry, Moray. Harding’s going to let us carry knives.”
Then the train arrived.
The noise from the band, coupled with the squeaking metal brakes, was deafening.
The Cedar Rapids people got their first glimpse of the Sterling team through the clouds of steam rising from the train. The effect only enhanced the air of legend, as if the team were descending through the very clouds of heaven itself.
The first thing you had to notice was that the team wore uniforms. You’d think that on a hot, one-hundred-and-twenty-five-mile trip the team would want to wear their summer clothing instead of the woolen uniforms.
But they stepped down from the train in white uniforms with red trim and red caps with white trim (as if they had no life other than being a legendary baseball team), most of them with handlebar mustaches, all of them brushing at least six foot one or six foot two, and at least a fourth of them with noses that looked as if their off-hours were spent in fisticuffs.
They fanned out along the wooden platform in the way an army might have, just before assaulting an opponent.
The mayor of Cedar Rapids, a man with white hair and the manner of a tremulous minister, went up to the man everybody recognized as Mad Mike McGee and put out his hand.
A photographer, who had been nervously waiting for this moment, began waving them closer together for a picture.
Mad Mike McGee aimed a brown stream of tobacco juice about a quarter inch away from the photographer’s foot.
Mad Mike, the only squat member of the Sterling team, looked as if he ate railroad spikes for breakfast. He had scars and he had tattoos and he had a prominent chipped tooth. Probably from eating railroad spikes.
“So this is Cedar Rapids,” he said. “Never been here before. Never wanted to be, either.”
The Sterling team roared.
The mayor, who was not a demonstrative man, said, “Oh, it’s not such a bad place, Mad Mike.”
“Hell, tell him where to get off!” somebody shouted from the Cedar Rapids crowd.
The mayor, realizing he’d just let down the citizens who had voted him into office, cleared his throat, and said, “In fact, it’s not a bad place at all, ” as if his words rang with courage.
Several in the Cedar Rapids crowd shook their heads at the mayor.
“Where’s this Graves I’ve heard so much about?” McGee said. “Rusty Fitzsimmons wants to meet him.”
***
When Les heard his name mentioned, his stomach began doing terrible things.
“Les? Is Les Graves here?” the mayor called, sounding like an usher paging somebody in the balcony of the Greene Opera House.
May, obviously seeing that Les was nervous, squeezed his arm and said, “You’ll be fine, Les.”
Les swallowed. “I hope.”
“Les? Is Les Graves here?” the mayor continued to call.
“Right here, Mayor,” Harding called back.
To Les, Harding said, “Now don’t take no guff from that bastard.”
Les wondered if Harding was referring to the mayor, Mad Mike McGee or Fitzsimmons.
Les sort of waved his hand so that the mayor could see him and then he sort of put a smile on his face and then he sort of went up to the head of the crowd. His stomach was twice as bad as it had been and he knew anytime now it would be three times as bad.
When he finally got a first look at Fitzsimmons, Les saw why all the sportswriters wrote about the man as if he was on loan from Olympus.
Fitzsimmons stood at least six two and had shoulders you could comfortably rest a boxcar on. He had a shanty-Irish face, which meant he managed to look both innocent and mean at the same time, and he had a smile he must have practiced as often as he did his fast ball.
“This is Graves?” Mad Mike McGee said.
“This,” the mayor said, missing Mad Mike’s disparaging tone completely, “is Lester Graves.”
“God, Mayor,” Les said, like a small boy who’d just been embarrassed by a parent, "you know how much I hate Lester.”
“So it’s ‘Lester,’ is it?” said Rusty Fitzsimmons, laughing. “That’s an awfully nice name, ‘Lester’ is.”
Even from ten feet away, you could hear Harding say, “Boy, that mayor’s a stupid bastard.”
“Well, ‘Lester,’ I’m Rusty Fitzsimmons.”
And with that he put out a right hand whose palm was so big you could hide a baseball in it.
Les watched as his own, much smaller, hand traversed the empty space separating the two men and connected with Fitzsimmons’.
The pain was instant.
Never before in his life had Les felt a grip like this.
The ache started in his fingers and ran the length of his arm and even began radiating into his shoulder.
Fitzsimmons knew what he was doing, of course, and so his smile rivaled the sun’s for sheer brilliance.
And he didn’t let go, either.
Les wriggled his hand as much as he could without looking as if he was trying to wrench it free, but Fitzsimmons kept holding on.
“Quite a grip he’s got there, don’t you think, ‘Lester?’ ” said Mad Mike McGee.
By now Harding had pushed his way up to the front of the crowd. The burly fireman said, “That’s his pitching hand and you know it, Fitzsimmons.”
Les felt hot blood start up his neck and fill his cheeks.
He felt a total fool.
“Well, so it is,” Fitzsimmons said. “Now I sure wouldn’t want to damage ‘Lester’s’ pitching hand now, would I?”
“Let him go.”
“Please, Harding, I can take care of myself,” Les said. He was beginning to feel a lot like somebody who should actually be named Lester.
Later on, the newspaper account of what followed would accuse Harding, who had never been known for his even temper, of throwing the first punch. And so it was.
Harding took two steps toward Fitzsimmons, got just enough leverage to let go a short cracking hook to the jaw and fired.
If nothing else, Fitzsimmons let go of Les’s hand. Right away.
But almost simultaneously, Fitzsimmons also decked Harding. With a single punch.
And that’s when the general melee broke out.
The Cedar Rapids depot was transformed from a somewhat sleepy wooden platform filled with respectable men in celluloid collars and women in flowery summer hats to the scene of an all-out brawl.
The men of both teams managed to push the ladies aside and go at each other with a fervor the heat of the day only increased.
If you were not tall enough to crack a man on the jaw, then it was eminently permissible to kick him sharply on the shins (if not other bodily parts), and if you saw a friend of yours in trouble, then you were to forget all about Queensberry and come up from behind the man assaulting your friend and let him have a good and sinking punch to the spine.
Les was aware of throwing six (or maybe seven) punches at men in white uniforms and even more aware of taking twenty or so in return.
Given the fact that his nose was bleeding and that one of his front teeth was loose, he was not unhappy when a policeman stood up on a nearby baggage wagon and exploded a Smith and Wesson for attention and order.
The gunshot got everybody’s attention immediately.
The few men who continued to swing were yanked to order by their friends.
The policeman, a well-respected Czech named Severe, said, “Say something, Mayor.”
&n
bsp; The mayor, standing on the ground, looked miserably up at Severe and said, “Why don’t you handle it? You’re doing a good job.”
Severe frowned and shook his head and then barked to the men before him, “You’re supposed to save your spunk for the playing field.”
There was, of course, grumbling and cursing and various accusations as to who had started it. Severe raised his weapon as if to fire again. It was enough to bring back order.
“Now, I want one of you businessmen to help the Sterling team find their hotel,” Severe said, “and I want the Cedar Rapids team to go back to their jobs or their homes.” He paused. “Now does everybody understand me?”
Like chastened children-Severe was a thickset, impressive man- they all paid him at least the lip service of dutiful nods.
“Now,” Severe said, “go!”
And so they went.
***
“Hurt?”
“Sort of.”
“I’m being as easy as I can.”
"I know and I appreciate it.”
“How’s your hand?”
“All right, I guess.”
They were in Greene Square Park, Les and May, and she was seeing to his cut lip with cotton and iodine.
Les stretched his fingers out before him. Between getting them squeezed by Rusty Fitzsimmons and bruised by pounding them on people’s faces, they were pained but seemed otherwise all right. “Now let’s look at that tooth,” May said.
She put a tender finger to his loose tooth. “Boy,” she said. “Boy, it’s really loose.”
He touched his tongue to it. “It’s like when you were six and you had a tooth that was about to fall out and you kept on worrying it with your tongue.”
She smiled at him. “I guess you’re going to live.”
“I guess I am.”
She laughed. “And I guess that’s pretty good news.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear it, anyway.”
So they sat back against the tree. The grass was very green and there were butterflies, some orange, some white, one even bluish, and there was a breeze that blew the tops of fluffy dandelions into a million pieces that floated on the soft currents of summer air.