Kid from Tomkinsville (2 page)

“Now... now... what’s that you’re saying?” Yes, he must be getting old, muttering to himself. They went along the platform hand in hand, he holding her and reluctant to let her go. "Remember, dear, this isn’t your last season. I know it isn’t. With your experience you won’t be just a bullpen catcher. How do you know, maybe you’ll get a job as manager. Just you wait and see.

He shook his head. Managers’ jobs didn’t come just for the asking. Then a loudspeaker bellowed a warning. “Stand back, please. Palmetto Limited; Jacksonville, Tampa, St. Pete, Sarasota and the West Coast.” Still pressing her close he walked ahead as the train with a roar from behind rumbled past, slithered down to a hissing stop. He glanced up at the lighted cars and saw a face he knew. Another, and another. Red Allen, the first baseman. Casey, the sportswriter, his hands in his pockets as usual, standing on the platform with a cigarette in his mouth. And someone... someone who waved at him he didn’t recognize. Those familiar faces cheered him.

“Yo’ car up ahead, boss. 456. Up ahead.” They went up hand in hand. Those faces helped, friends who liked him and would be in there fighting in the dead heat of St. Louis and Cincinnati in July, fellows who knew what it was to stick through a losing game with a losing team. Easy enough to have pepper when you were in second place. But when you were last; that’s when it was hard to fight.

Car 456. Here it was. “Tampa, Clearwater, St. Pete, Sarasota next car.”

“Good-by, Helen.”

“Good-by. Don’t worry. Things will work out; you’ll see. Take care of yourself at first. Don’t overdo.”

He climbed up, turned and waved to her, and went inside. The bright lights of the interior dazzled him momentarily, but the sound of familiar voices calling his name greeted his ears.

“There he is now....”

“Hey, Dave, old boy....”

“How’s the old kid, Dave, how arya?...”

“What’s the sign say?”

“Sez Tampa, 22 miles.”

“Suits me. This driving gets tiresome. Never driven down before and I won’t drive down again.” The big Cadillac was leaping down a straight road bordered on one side by the railroad track and on the other by pine groves. It was a brand-new car glistening in the afternoon sunshine, driven with sureness and touch by the blond man at the wheel. He must have driven expensive cars all his life, for there was an air of authority in his grasp of the wheel which seemed to go with cars like Cadillacs.

“Saw Murphy last night in the lobby.”

“Bill Murphy? Giants’ manager?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he doing up there?”

“On a scouting trip.”

“What’s he say?”

“Says the Yanks are hot this year. Says he seen you with your arms round MacManus’s neck in a picture. Guesses that’ll be the last time it’ll be there unless you grab off a pennant.”

“Wait till Mac hears that one. It’ll burn him up. Funny about those two guys, they sure get in each other’s hair, don’t they? Mac’s been okay with me. He’s tough, so is a good ballplayer.”

“Yeah... well, I ain’t noticed you were very easy pickings. You always looked out for yourself pretty good.”

“Who else? No one ever helped me into the big leagues. I fought my own way up, ever since I was a kid I fought, ever since I was a kid with no money to buy shoes in Montpelier, Vermont.”

“Yeah. You’re a scrapper all right. That Gas House Gang, they’re all scrappers. They sure weren’t a bunch of sissies. Great gang, those boys.”

“Scrapping wins pennants. I’d like this team to be scrappers. To be a hustling ballclub, no lead in their tails. We got too many nice boys. Too much dead wood. Old Caswell and Jennison and Dave Leonard. Been in the League almost twenty years, he has. I want youngsters. Like this-here-now Kid from Tomkinsville. They tell me he’ll be a ballplayer one of these days... maybe....” He added the last word as an afterthought. When you’ve been up and around a few years in baseball and seen a few of them come and go, when you’ve watched kids with big reputations in the minors go to pieces for no reason at all with a big-league club, well, you get sort of cautious.

In the coach behind the baggage car in front of the train, the Kid from Tomkinsville stretched his legs for the twentieth time in an hour. The dog-eared and dirty copy of
Detective Stories
fell to the ground and stayed there because he had read it through, some stories twice over. He ached everywhere. Sleeping in a day coach does things to you. No matter how you sit or what position you take, you wake up sore and weary. Your neck is stiff. The jolting and rocking of the train tightens your leg muscles. It makes your hips and thighs ache. The thick, unchanged air contracts your throat and gives you a heavy feeling in your head, the continual dust irritates your nasal passages. Outside the warm afternoon sunshine beat through dingy window panes into the stuffy interior of the car. They had left Washington the previous night in a blizzard, but the sun was shining at Jacksonville in the morning. It was a pleasant, warm, and welcome sun. Now it was hot and much less welcome. A long flat road wound beside the track with groves of pine trees beyond. Slowly a big blue car came into sight, and he envied the two bareheaded men sitting in the front. It was an expensive cabriolet with the top back, and suitcases and golf bags piled high in the rear. A couple of millionaires, probably, going south for a winter vacation. Some folks had all the luck. Now the car swerved close to the train, then it veered away as the road shifted, but always it moved gently ahead until finally it pulled out of sight.

Some day he’d have a car like that. A big shiny, blue-painted car, and take Grandma for a ride in it with the top back. Some day, when he was a successful ballplayer.

F
UNNY HOW A CHAP
can feel lonely even in a crowd.

The crowd made him feel more lonely than ever. Because those men in the roof garden at breakfast didn’t seem like ballplayers, not at least the kind he knew, but older men. They were business men, well-dressed fellows who were evidently prospering in a profession that they liked. They wore curious costumes—coats that didn’t match their gray trousers and pointed tan shoes with white tips. Everyone seemed to know everyone else; they called each other by their first names, and jokes and laughter floated across the tables as they looked at the menu with practiced glances, ordered what they wanted, and addressed the waitress as “Sweetmeat.” It made him feel terribly alone. He sat at a table unoccupied save for his roommate, a boy with big open brown eyes who like himself sat in silence, knowing no one.

Down in the lobby after breakfast it was worse. While he sat silently in a big chair, men kept coming downstairs, greeting old friends, calling in delight as they found a pal, laughing and talking, perfectly at ease, with no worries or fears. He was not only unhappy, he was afraid, and his loneliness accentuated his fright. There was the fear of not making good, of having to return home without a job as everyone in Tomkinsville had predicted. Worst of all, there was the worry as to whether he’d ever be able to return. Suppose he couldn’t make the grade? Lots of rookies didn’t. Suppose... Then a man stalked across the lobby in front of his chair.

The man was tall, broad-shouldered, quietly but expensively dressed in blue striped trousers, a blue sports coat, and the whitest of white sports shoes. The ballplayers all had tan shoes with white tips, but his shoes were white all over. There was something impressive in the way he walked, or maybe in the way he swayed his shoulders, and the gesture with which he twirled his Panama in his hand as he moved over to the newsstand. He picked up a newspaper with decisive movement. One... two... three... four... now what does anyone want five newspapers for? There was even decision in the way he folded them and snapped them under his arm, turned and walked down the stairs to the street. This man was somebody. Someone who’d done things. He was sure of himself. He was...

Of course. It was MacManus.

Jack MacManus, the man who broke into the big leagues straight from Minnesota, the guy who enlisted as a private in the war and came out a colonel, who went back to college and played on a Big Ten championship football team, who started off in the big leagues by spiking Ty Cobb when Ty tried to run him down as a fresh young busher. Man who’d made a million dollars in oil, lost it in the market, re-made it in radio, bought a minor league club, and finally picked up the Dodgers the year before. The Kid knew about MacManus. Everyone in baseball knew about him. Chap who put Columbus on the map, who started night baseball, who was forever scrapping with someone: Judge Landis, the umpires, or Bill Murphy; yes, his feud with the Giant manager was famous. That was MacManus all right. It couldn’t be anyone else. No wonder he walked that way, held himself like that. He resembled Mr. Haskins, the president of the First National Bank at home, who got the Kid his job in MacKenzie’s drugstore on the corner of South Main. All at once the difference became apparent. This man was the real thing. Mr. Haskins was small town and small time. An idol tumbled as those broad shoulders sauntered down the steps of the Fort Harrison Hotel into the deep Florida sun.

If that was MacManus, and it couldn’t be anyone else, why not settle things immediately? A resolution seized the Kid. Beneath the porch, papers under his arm, his feet wide apart, the great man stood, regarding the sunny street through his dark glasses, and waiting for his car. Without further thought or considering what he was doing, or how he would be received, the Kid darted down the steps.

“Mr. MacManus... I’m... I’m Roy Tucker....”

He started and turned round. There was half a frown on his face, but the freckles on his nose were reassuring and through the dark glasses his eyes were blue and crinkly round the corners. He looked up quickly. “Who... oh, yeah... Roy Tucker... sure, the Kid from Tomkinsville... yeah, mighty glad to see you, fine to have you with us.” He held out a hand. It was a lean, strong hand and the grip was encouraging.

“Why, sure, I remember the afternoon you pitched against those Cuban All-Stars in Waterbury last summer. Hope you’ll show us something like that down here.”

“Uhuh. I sure hope. That’s what I wanted to ask, Mr. MacManus. If you... if the team... in case you can’t use me at all, do I come to get my fare paid home?”

Another quick look. His eyes narrowed. “Your fare paid home? Wait a minute... didn’t he send you money for carfare down here? You should have had a check or a ticket to come down.”

“Yessir. He sent me a check. It came last month. But we had to use it to put a new roof on the farm. That big storm last winter like to blow it off and I couldn’t leave Grandma. So when it came time to report I just borrowed the money from her.”

“Off your grandma? You live with your grandma?”

“Yessir. My father’s dead, and my mother died two years ago. So I sort of wondered if I’d get sent back... or not....”

“Well, you’ll be paid something while you’re down here.”

“Yessir, I know, but that goes home to Grandma. Y’see I had a job at MacKenzie’s drugstore, but when I quit ’course my pay there stopped.”

“So you want to know if you’ll be sent back to your job?”

“No, sir. Mr. MacKenzie, he said he wasn’t holding jobs open for ballplayers. He gave the job to Jimmy Harrison. I just want so’s I can take care of Grandma.”

“I getcha. Well, I shouldn’t worry if I were you. We’ll see you land some place. Maybe if we can’t use you there’ll be a spot for you in one of our farms. Just you go in there and pitch the kind of ball you did the day I saw you last summer. And don’t worry about getting home, understand?”

“Thanks, Mr. MacManus. Thanks lots. That sure helps. I’ll be in there trying every minute.” Now the sun really was shining. He felt warm and happy because the worst load of all was taken from his mind. Somehow, some way, they’d see he got back to Grandma. Who knows; maybe he might make good after all? Might be able to buy a blue sports coat with blue striped pants and white shoes. And a big car with the top rolled back to drive down all the way to the training camps in Florida. Who knows? There was almost a grin on the great man’s face. He was smiling at someone.

“Hey, Jim, c’mon over here. Meet Roy Tucker, kid from Connecticut I was telling you about yesterday.”

A small, thickset man coming out of the hotel yanked his hand from his side pocket. It was a flabby hand, not lean and hard like MacManus’s. “Oh, yeah, you’re the Boy Wonder from Connecticut, are you? Gladder see you. Well, you joined a screwy outfit all right.” He looked the Kid up and down with a glance that was not unfriendly and not friendly either. Then he half turned his back, interested no more, and addressed MacManus.

“Say, Murphy just passed through. He stopped for breakfast. Drove down south, on some kind of scouting trip, for that Tiger second baseman, I guess. Know what he said?”

The face of the older man darkened at once. He became another person, full of unconcealed annoyance as he answered quickly:

“No, I don’t. I don’t care what he said. Don’t bother to tell me. Let him mind his own business and I’ll try to mind mine.”

“Yeah, but you gotta hear this one. This is good, this is. He says the Dodgers’ll win the pennant.”

“This year?”

“Yep. This year.”

“How’s he figure that one?”

“Says there’s gonna be war. That all the other teams will have to go and fight, but that most of the Dodgers will be too old...”

The annoyance that had changed into curiosity changed into anger. His face became red.

“Kindly tell Murphy to mind his own business and quit popping off about our chances, will you?” His voice rose. The Kid thought this a good chance to move out of the firing line, especially as the bus that was to take the squad to the ball park drew up just then with a creaking of brakes. He heard the last few words....

“Tell him I’m running my ballclub, and if he doesn’t mind...”

A
GRAY-HAIRED MAN
in a dingy shirt and a blue baseball cap well down over his eyes shoved an armful of clothes at the Kid and indicated his locker. “Fifty-six. In the back row, there.” The lockers were plain wooden stalls about six feet high with a shelf one or two feet from the top. The front of his locker was open and along the edge at the top was pasted: