Free Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop Page A

the infielder named Hoey said. “Even Jumbo?”
    “I said everybody.”
    “So why wasn’t Jumbo at practice, sir?” Number Seven said. “We could’ve used him at first. His subs made him look like Nijinski. Compared to those galoots, he is Nijinski.”
    “Take a leap, Buck!” Norm Sudikoff shouted.
    “Jumbo Hank Clerval had some personal business in Alabama to attend to,” Mister JayMac said. “He’ll be at our meeting tonight, Mr. Hoey, never you fear.”
    Buck Hoey, the shortstop, just wouldn’t let up: “ Alabama? How’d Jumbo get to Alabama?”
    “He borrowed my car,” Mister JayMac said,
    “Your Caddy?” Hoey said. “How’d Jumbo get to be such a privileged character? Going four for four gainst Marble Springs? Shit-a-load, sir, I once hit for the cycle gainst those palookas, and you never loaned me a car. What’s Jumbo got anyway? Proof of some kinda draft-board hanky-panky?”
    The other men on the Brown Bomber ducked; they cowered in their places. The only soul among us not drawn gut-tight with shock and worry, except maybe Hoey, was Euclid. He was paging through Plastic Man for maybe the twentieth time.
    “Let it go, Mr. Hoey,” Mister JayMac said.
    “Jesus,” Hoey started. “You’d think the guy was—”
    “Let it go.”
    Hoey let it go. Didn’t seem too trodden upon, though. He seemed happy. Mister JayMac sat down. Darius put the bus in gear, and we bumped out of the parking lot onto a boulevard lined with water oaks. Hoey caught my eye and waved at all the browbeaten ballplayers in front of us.
    “Ever see such a bunch of pantywaists?” he asked.
    I could only look at him. Hoey was the stud I’d have to beat out to become a regular.
    Worse luck, he was lean, tough, and not to be messed with.
    “S matter with you, kid? Cat got your tongue?”

6

    D arius drove us to McKissic House, the team boardinghouse where Mister JayMac, for part of everyone’s monthly salary, put up all the single men on his team. In McKissic House, this entire summer, I’d eat my meals and spend my nights when the Hellbenders didn’t have an away game.
    Cripes, I thought when our bus growled up its semicircular drive. How great, not to have to wear down my shoe leather looking for a place to rent—especially with Camp Penticuff so close and wartime housing so tight that roomers doubling up with relatives or friends matter-of-factly read the obits to get a jump on likely vacancies.
    Because Mister JayMac owned a dozen or more old mill houses in the Cotton Creek area of Highbridge, he’d taken that worry off all his players’ shoulders. Men with wives and kids in town, I learned later, rented these tarboxes from Mister JayMac for at least six months, April through September, his minimum lease. In October, he’d offer his vacant houses to military transients, but with the stipulation they clear out at the end of March so married Hellbenders could reclaim the premises in time for the new season. In a military town with beaucoups of demand for rental properties, he had a high-handed marketing approach, maybe even a greedy-seeming one, but Mister JayMac didn’t care about the money he could make—he could do that renting to either GIs or players—but about the welfare of his immediate employees during each CVL season. So most of us looked at Mister JayMac not as a robber baron but as our very own Daddy Warbucks.
    Only two-thirds of the Hellbenders made the trip all the way from McKissic Field to McKissic House. Darius drove first to the Cotton Creek neighborhood, where six men rented houses, and dropped them off. Buck Hoey, the wiseguy shortstop who’d bellyached about the first baseman who hadn’t come to practice, hopped down last, near a blue frame house with more shrubs and a prettier paint job than any house around it. When Hoey got off, I relaxed a bit.
    As for McKissic House, it hunkered back from Angus Road, on a woodsy stand of acreage on Highbridge’s southeastern corner, floating among the