Free The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

don’t want explaining. They just want you to do what they tell you. He’ll take it out of my hide if he gets the chance.”
    â€œYeah, I’ve known a few like that. Everybody has, chances are,” Eddie said. “Well, traveling with the House of Daniel’s a good way not to give him the chance. We go all over the map, and sometimes we don’t know where we’re heading till we turn left instead of right. Somebody sets up a game against a strong team in a good ballpark, we’ll go. You’d best believe we will.”
    â€œHow often do y’all win, anyway?” I asked.
    That y’all made Eddie smile. The House of Daniel fellas, they talked like they came from the North. They did, most of ’em, so I guess they were entitled. He thought for a couple of seconds, working it out. “Two out of three, three out of four, something like that,” he said. “It’s baseball. You don’t win all the time. Their pitcher throws a great game or one of your guys kicks one or the umps are even worse than usual or … oh, a million things. But we do all right. Plenty good enough to keep going.”
    â€œYou sure do,” I said. “Only reason Ponca City caught you there was the collision, but you won just the same. And the Greasemen, they’re pretty good.”
    â€œThey weren’t bad.” Eddie Lelivelt sounded like he was giving them the waddayacallit—the benefit of the doubt. He looked over at me out of the corner of his eye. “How about the Enid team you’re off of? How do they stack up against Ponca City?”
    â€œWell, we licked ’em yesterday. That’s how come I was in town.” That was one of the reasons, anyhow. “But they beat us about as often as we beat them.”
    He kind of grunted, as if to say, Yeah, the likes of you could start for a team that good. He wasn’t dogging me or anything, just letting me know what he thought. I couldn’t very well tell him he was wrong, either. Rabbit O’Leary looked like a better ballplayer than I am to me, too.
    Except Rabbit was back there in Ponca City with maybe a cracked noggin and with a busted collarbone for sure, and I was on the bus. I was on for as long as I could stay there, anyway. That’s how baseball works before you ever step out between the white lines.
    The bus took us past three or four farms in a row with no crops in the ground, no animals in the fields, empty farmhouses with busted windows, barns and outbuildings fading in the harsh sunlight and starting to fall to pieces. Eddie stared out the window at them, and at the roof-high dust devil dancing in front of one.
    He turned back to me. “What went wrong here?”
    I kind of shrugged. “Farmers in these parts had trouble making ends meet even before the Big Bubble popped. When it did, the bankers foreclosed on some. A couple of bankers got shot trying.”
    â€œDoesn’t break my heart,” Eddie said.
    â€œMine, neither. Other folks just upped and left—reckoned they had no hope where they were at. My pa, he was like that. Others yet … That dust devil you saw, that’s just a baby next to a lot of ’em. You can’t grow anything when all your dirt’s blowing away and somebody else’s dirt is coming down on top of you. So that’s prying people off the land, too.”
    Eddie clicked his tongue between his teeth. “It shouldn’t be like this. It isn’t right.”
    I shrugged again. “You know that. I know that. Everybody says the same thing. But it doesn’t change. It doesn’t get better. You don’t need me to tell you so. Playing with this team, you’ve done more traveling than I have. You can see for yourself.”
    â€œI’ve seen plenty,” he answered, his voice quiet. “This is as bad as anything, though.”
    â€œHow about that?” I said, and whistled a few notes between my