Free Satch & Me by Dan Gutman Page A

he was aiming at. It was a deer. A beautiful white-tailed deer, standing motionless in the forest. It must have been about a hundred yards away.
    â€œAre you gonna kill it, Satch?” I asked.
    â€œDarn tootin’ I am.”
    Now, I have mixed feelings about hunting. I mean, it’s not like I’m a vegetarian or anything. I eat hamburgers. I eat steak. I don’t mind animals being killed for food. I just don’t particularly like watching it happen.
    Satch pulled the trigger and bam !
    He missed. Startled by the noise, the deer dashed off into the woods.
    â€œShoot!” Satch said. “Woulda had ’im if I was throwin’ a ball.”
    We went back to the car so Satch could put his gun away. You should have seen the trunk of that Packard. He kept food and a portable stove in there. There was a heat lamp, an electric massager, and a ukelele. Bats, balls, a couple of gloves, and catcher’s equipment. Then there were his clothes. He had a bunch of suits, shirts, and at least two dozen ties. I don’t know how all that stuff fit in there.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Flip asked, picking up a pair of red-and-yellow-flowered shorts. They looked like they were made from silk or something.
    â€œThose are my underdrawers, thank you very much,” Satch said, snatching them away.
    The trunk of the car looked like somebody’s closet. I suppose that made sense, because Satch seemed to live in his car.
    â€œI’m starved,” Satch said, taking a fishing pole out of the back of the trunk. “You boys up for chow?”
    Now that he mentioned it, there was that empty feeling in my stomach. The whole time Flip and I spent at that diner, I never did get anything to eat. We had given all our food to Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays.
    â€œAren’t you afraid you’ll be late for the World Series?” Flip asked. “The Monarchs’ bus must be miles ahead of us by now.”
    â€œDon’t you worry ’bout that,” Satch said. “They can’t start the game without me. That’s why they call it the startin’ pitcher, right?”
    Satch pulled out his stove and told us to make a fire. He grabbed the fishing pole and a bag and went back into the woods. I gathered some sticks and wood that were lying around under a tree. Flip built the fire. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes when Satch came back with a bag of fish.
    â€œCatfish!” Satch said. “Oh, we’re gonna eat good tonight!”
    Flip offered to cook, but Satch said nobody cooks catfish like he does. He gutted each fish in a few seconds, and then he pulled all kinds of spices and sauces out of the trunk. Soon the smell of roasting fish had my mouth watering. Satch cooked up some potatoes too, which he had stashed in another box.
    The food was truly excellent. Flip told Satch that if he ever stopped playing baseball, he could make a good living as a chef.
    â€œOh, I don’t know ’bout that,” Satch said, scraping the last of the potatoes off his plate. “Maybe I’ll pitch forever. I pitched over a thousand games already, you know.”
    â€œA thousand?” I asked. That was hard to believe.
    â€œI won 31 games in 1933,” he said, leaning back against a tree. “Threw 64 scoreless innings. Once I won 21 games in a row.”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” Flip said, and he knew just about everything there was to know about baseball.
    â€œNobody knows,” Satch said sadly. “I feel like the majors is a big old house, and it’s Christmas morn-in’ and there are presents everywhere. And I got my nose pressed against the window lookin’ in.”
    â€œThe major league record is 24 wins in a row,” Flip said. “Carl Hubbell.”
    â€œMajor league record?” Satch spit on the grass. “Major league records don’t mean nothin,’ ’cause I ain’t in the major leagues. I