Shoeless Joe (15 page)

Jerry mouths the usual inanities about it being a good car, getting forty miles per gallon and still having its original brakes at 105,000 miles. The boy wrings Jerry’s hand, thanks him profusely for his business, refuses a tip, and sprints off to service a van with a red and black rodeo scene glazed on its silver sides.

The station owner lumbers by, carrying an extra hundred pounds, above his belt and wearing a dirty sky-blue shirt with a faded ARCO crest on it.

“First day on the job,” he apologizes, nodding after the running boy. “Just appeared on my doorstep yesterday, like he knew I needed help. Didn’t know the first thing about cars, but he’s sure learned fast. He’s a go-getter, but he’ll get over it soon. Everyone does.”

In the quiet of the motel room, subdued by the thought of actually being there—the realization that we have to venture out and contact real people, ask intelligent questions—we sit silently on opposite sides of the bed, like Rodin’s statue seen in a mirror. Neither of us wants to start a job that could be like digging with a pick into a wall of rock. What are we suffering from? Postfantasy depression?

The
Chisholm Free Press
is located in a small storefront that I suspect may have been a confectionery or a dry-goods store, in a previous incarnation. There are several desks close together and immersed in a foliage of paper. The room smells of mucilage, ink, and varnish. The publisher, Veda Ponikvar, is a handsome woman with a sweet, innocent smile and a habit of pausing a second or two to assimilate each question, replaying the words in her mind before answering—a politician’s trick. On the wall of the tiny office are framed photographs of Veda with Jimmy Carter, and with Vice President Mondale. A separate photograph of Mondale is inscribed, “To my best friend, Veda.” A large photograph of George Wallace, and a certificate of some kind from the state of Alabama, take up part of another wall. Veda, we learn later, is a highly respected Democrat, has worked in Washington, and has traveled the world as part of State Department delegations to international trade conferences and state funerals.

She smiles slowly as she emerges from a back room where the actual printing is done; her glasses are on a fine chain around her neck, and she puts them on before asking if she can help us.

“I’m Ray Kinsella,” I say, “and this is Jerry Salinger. We’re trying to gather some information on an old-time baseball player named Moonlight Graham.”

She lets the statement hang in the air until the last echo of my voice has died away. Not certain that she understands, I am about to speak again.

“Doctor Graham?” she says.

“Yes. Yes. Did you know him? Do you remember him?”

Without a word, she turns, and from the top of the bluish filing cabinet, from under the drooping leaves of an African violet, she picks up a tiny 2” x 3” framed photograph and places it softly in my cupped hands.

It is a chest-up shot of a handsome young man in a baseball uniform. There is no insignia on the cap, but the large letters
N
and
Y
dominate the chest. Jerry looks at the picture. We stare at each other. The young man is dark and earnest looking, staring at the camera as though it owed him money.

“Well, we certainly seem to have started in the right place,” I stutter. The photograph, warm in my hand, leaves me short of breath. I can feel my heart beating exuberantly, and I look down, expecting it to be fluttering the material of my double-pocketed khaki shirt.

Veda Ponikvar is a woman of few words, but she produces from her files the newspaper story about Moonlight Graham’s death, and also an editorial from the same paper. Salinger and I read them at the counter, mouths hanging open as if we expect to be fed. We read one each, then exchange them.

The editorial is entitled “His Was a Life of Greatness.” I take a sheet of paper from the pocket of my shirt and copy a few sentences: And as the community grew, Doc became an integral part of the population. There were good years and lean ones. There were times when children could not afford eye glasses or milk, or clothing because of the economic upheavals, strikes and depressions.

Yet no child was ever denied these essentials, because in the background, there was a benevolent, understanding Doctor Graham. Without a word, without any fanfare or publicity, the glasses or the milk, or the ticket to the ballgame, found their way into the child’s pocket.

There were many simple, humble things that made Doc happy, but his eyes beamed brightest, whenever he read or heard of a student from Chisholm who did well … who reached the apex of perfection in his chosen endeavor.

He remembered everyone by name and in his travels, took signal pride in telling about a town called Chisholm and its cradle of people of many tongues and creeds.

For the old and young of this little mining town who knew Doctor Graham … his era was historic. There will never be another quite like it.

Salinger is considerate enough not to see the tear that oozes out onto my cheek and sits like a dewdrop for a few seconds before sliding into one of my sideburns.

I am satisfied with my notes, but Salinger asks for, and receives, photocopies of the obituary and the editorial. Along with these, Veda Ponikvar gives us the names of a few people who knew Doc Graham well. As we leave, Salinger clutches the newspaper articles sternly like Bibles. At the motel we read and reread them. I am as tense and anxious as if I were waiting for a 3–2 pitch. The magic energy that has brought us here seems to seep from us like sweat, now that we have something concrete to begin with. We are calmed by the high-country chill of the air. We are drained and ready to sleep.

I close my eyes seeing Annie’s red hair, the color of passion, but a persistent Eddie Scissons again elbows his way into my dreams.

“Do you believe in a hereafter?” he asks.

“Seems to me that’s getting into religion,” I say softly. “I try never to discuss religion or politics—I don’t have enough friends that I can afford to.”

“I’m a very religious man,” says Eddie, spreading his large hands on the maple tabletop at the Friendship Center. My dream is an exact videotape replay of a conversation we have had.

“When I go, I’ll have them bring my body down here to the Friendship Center, and my baseball boys will come down and look at me laying there, and they’ll say, ‘Yep, that’s Eddie, and he’s dead as Billy-be-damned, so you can put the lid down on the coffin now and drive in the nails,’ and they’ll carry me over to the graveyard where I got a plot not far from my Ellen, and not very far from the Black Angel.”

“The baseball boys?” I say. And I think of Eddie’s plot being near the Black Angel, a twelve-foot bronze monument of a dark angel with wings spread in a protective gesture. She has stood for over half a century above the grave of a much-loved son of a Czech immigrant woman. The angel has become part of Iowa City folkways, and one of the many rumors about it is that if you kiss a virgin girl beneath the shadow of the angel’s wings at midnight, the statue will turn white.

“The baseball boys,” Eddie repeats. “Kept in touch with my teammates over the years, I have. They’re all gone now, but their sons are around. We exchange cards at Christmas.” And he smiles and shakes his head up and down as if stirring memories up from darkness. “I’ve asked some of them, one of Heinie Zimmerman’s boys; and Wildfire Schulte, why one of his grandsons was here to see me not three years ago, lives in Chicago and has a season ticket to the Cubs, took me there for a three-game series against St. Louis and I slept in his guest room out around Toledo, Iowa, his son’s gonna be one of my pallbearers. They all are. They’re my baseball boys, and they like to hear about the old days and about their daddies and their granddaddies.” Eddie’s eyes move far away, and he stares over my head, far beyond the window that overlooks Gilbert Street, perhaps at a varnished coffin being wheeled out onto the diamond at Wrigley Field. Perhaps he sees the flag at half-mast, and the players, hats in hands, standing solemnly at attention as a bugler plays taps in feeble memory of the oldest Chicago Cub.

In the morning, while Jerry goes for a haircut and to buy a clean shirt, I head for the Chisholm Public Library, where I immerse myself in yellowed issues of the
Chisholm Tribune-Herald,
picking my way through the town’s long-dead past, feeling as if I have just entered an attic untouched for three-quarters of a century.

Almost immediately, I uncover a baseball-sized nugget.

P
OPULAR
D
OCTOR
C
UPID’S
V
ICTIM

Miss Alicia Madden and A. W. Graham Take Solemn Vows. Wed at Rochester.

The popular Dr. A. W. Graham left Chisholm on Monday, ostensibly to attend a clinic at the Medical and Surgical Center at Rochester, but from a clipping taken from the
Rochester Daily Bulletin,
which follows, the clinic is entirely the doctor’s own. He is still enjoying it, having left immediately for a honeymoon trip to the far eastern states. The boys are waiting for his return.

“Amid the most charming autumnal decorations, fifty guests assembled at Silver Creek Farm to witness the nuptials which united Miss A. V. Madden and Dr. A. W. Graham of Chisholm. The ceremony took place at the parsonage of St. John’s Church, the officiating priest being Rev. Fr. Murphy.”

The remainder of the clipping lists the guests and bridesmaids, and discusses the attire of the bridal party. What is interesting is that none of Doc’s relatives were present.

I meet Jerry and suggest we start the long process of interviewing people. I imagine we will work together. Jerry has purchased a stenographer’s notebook, and I assume he will studiously make notes of conversations while I lurk in the background.

“I work alone,” says Jerry, holding the closed notebook against his chest.

“You sound like a detective in a 1947 B movie,” I say, trying not to appear offended.

“I have my own assignment to complete, remember. I’m the only one who knows how to do it.”

Jerry walks away, his shoulders slightly stooped, and I am left alone in the middle of Lake Street, the main street of Chisholm, Minnesota.

People are friendly and eager to talk about Doc Graham, but a pattern soon develops. “Oh, I don’t know much about him,” they say, “but you should talk to so-and-so.” I conscientiously write down the name of so-and-so. This scenario is repeated several times until the names of the first people I talked to start reappearing at the top of the list. After I discover this, I press each person for a memory of Doc.

“Do you remember anything special, or funny, or wonderful, or awful?” I ask again and again. And much to my surprise, I come to life more with each interview, become happy as a boy selling magazine subscriptions to long-suffering neighbors.

At the motel we compare notes on what we have found, but Jerry is careful not to let me see what he has written in the notebook. I read Jerry the most interesting quotes I have gathered:

“He never missed a baseball or football game. My daughter was a pretty hefty girl. Doc took a look at her sitting in her slip on the wooden chair in his office and he said, ‘Too bad she’s a girl. She’d make a great tackle for the football team.’ Doc was the kind of man who could get away with saying something like that—why if anybody else had said that, we’d have both been really offended.”

“We all went to a tournament in Minneapolis once. Doc found out some of us didn’t have a place to stay, so he sneaked us into his room until there were eleven or twelve of us. When he realized there were so many of us he just shook his head and walked off and got himself another room.”

“Doc didn’t drink or smoke, but he used to chew up paper and spit it out wherever he went. If you were around Doc very long, you learned to duck. Doc was at a convention in Chicago and I guess they gave out sample cigarette packages. He didn’t approve of my smoking, but he sent me the sample anyway. Just addressed it to my name with ‘NORD SIDE OF TOWN’ for an address.”

“What are you guys doin’ here anyway? It’s just like you got shovels and are diggin’ Doc Graham up.”

“Alicia Madden was teaching school here when she met Doc. When I was a little girl, she was my teacher. We just held our breath when she walked into the room, she was so beautiful. We used to call her Miss Flower. I don’t know if she knew that or not.”

“Doc used to play for the New York Giants. Oh, for several years, I think. He never talked about it. I never heard of him being called Moonlight.”

That night I sleep more peacefully; my only dream is of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the phantom White Sox standing silently in left field staring down at something, sadly.

By the time I get to the nearby Country Kitchen Restaurant for breakfast, I find Salinger surrounded. Like the Pied Piper, he has accumulated a flock of followers. Several tables have been pushed together, and he sits at the head drinking coffee and making notes. As I squeeze in beside him, I can feel the room get quiet. Salinger gulps the last of his coffee, excuses himself. Those around the table are mostly men past retirement age. I have not been introduced, but the men obviously know I am connected with Salinger, and after a long, uneasy silence, they begin talking to me.

“Everybody’s talking about you two,” says Louis, a stalky, balding man with a broad face and bent nose. “Mario and Frank,” and he waves his hand to indicate two others at the table, “came over to my place last night, and we told Doc Graham stories until after midnight. I bet it was the same all over town. I have some stories to tell you. I even wrote some of them down.” He drags from the pocket of his plaid shirt a lined paper ripped from a coiled-ring scribbler, the left edge ragged.

“Memory’s a funny thing,” he goes on. “It’s like all those memories we have of Doc Graham had gone to sleep and sunk way down inside us.” He pats his ample tummy. “But once you started asking about him and started us talking about him, why they swum right up to the surface again. It’s almost like you brought Doc back to life.