Read Bang The Drum Slowly Online
Authors: Mark Harris
Bang The Drum Slowly (5 page)
I roomed with Perry Simpson most of 52. Then Keith come up, a colored fellow, and they naturally juggled him in with Perry, and me with Bruce. I wrote in “The Southpaw” that “I figured I could put up with Bruce for a month,” page 295, 300 in the quarter book. I am sorry I wrote it now, though he will never see it. He never reads. It was long more than a month. It was all 53 and 54 except a couple months when the club took me and Holly the apartment on 66 Street, and we hit it off pretty good once I got used to the stink of shaving lotion and this filthy chewing tobacco called Days O Work and spitting incurves and outcurves out the window and urinating in the sink and calling me “Arthur” and calling the bellboys “Ballboys” and never flushing the goddam toilet until every time he forgot I made him stand there and flush it 5 times, and sending home postcards with nothing wrote on them, all of it getting me down when it should of never bothered me a minute, or if it bothered me I should of went and flushed it myself and not made a speech because if I had the sense to look in my own goddam book I would of seen where his guts and his heart were being eat away. I should of knew it the first time I ever took any notice of him, in the spring of 52 at Aqua Clara. Red Traphagen says the same, saying “Slap it all in,” and finding it for me, page 139,142 in the quarter book—
“All except Bruce Pearson. Bruce is the third-string catcher. He might catch 5 or 6 games a year, but mostly he warms pitchers in the bullpen. Every year he comes 2 days late to camp because he ties one on on the way down. He don’t drink except once a year, and then he goes the whole hog and drinks for 2 days in Jacksonville and Dutch has got to send Bradley Lord, and Bradley has got to hunt around for Bruce and find him and wait till he is done. Then he puts him on a bus to Aqua Clara, and when he gets there Doc Loftus works him over awhile and Mick McKinney works him over some more, and after about 6 hours Bruce is as good as new.
“The sad part is that there is never much work for him. Yet a ballplayer has got to play ball like a singer has got to sing and an artist has got to draw pictures and a mountain climber has got to have a mountain to climb or else go crazy. That’s the way it is, and that is why things look so dark for Bruce every spring.
“You never seen such a sight. I could scarcely recognize him, for he did not look a-tall like the ballplayer that I had throwed to in the bullpen the September before. He is blondheaded, and it was pasted down over his eyes now, and there was blood in it, and the way I remembered him he was meek and mild and never said a word unless he was spoke to. But now he was ranting and raving. He had Bradley Lord by the back of the neck, and he called Bradley every name in the book plus a few that I suppose is special to Bainbridge, Georgia, and his shirt was tore clean in 2 and the fly of his pants was wide open and all the buttons gone. Bradley Lord was screaming at Dutch to take him off his hands. Dutch just laughed. “He will quieten down,” he said.
“Then he begun to cry, and it was pitiful, and he cussed out Bradley Lord some more, and he cussed out the Grayhound Bus Company and the City of Jacksonville and the whole State of Florida and the game of baseball and QC and all the cities in the 4-State Mountain League, cussing and crying all the while. Dutch said he never seen him quite so bad before, and he sent Bradley Lord out for Doc Solomon and for Mike Mulrooney, Mike being over working with the rooks.
“After a little bit he stopped. He was sobbing and shaking, but he seemed better, and he rose and went over to the fountain and took a drink and come back rather wobbly and sat on the bench in front of the lockers. He seemed deep in thought, and then he rose and went very deliberate to the water again, and he filled his mouth and shot a stream across at Red, and it caught Red square in the face, and Red wiped it away.
“2 men come in for the empty crate of milk, and Bruce begun to give them hell and call them all sorts of foul names, “nigger” and such, and some of the boys made him quieten down and chased the men out of there so as not to cause any more disturbance than was necessary, and then Bruce begun a torrent, running down the colored people and milk companies and Bradley Lord. He dove for the bottles and would of upset the crate but me and Lindon pulled him off. He got hold of one bottle, however, and looked around for someone to fire it at, but by this time the clubhouse was cleared out and there was nobody left but me, for all the boys was eating their lunch on the grass outside. Bruce smashed the bottle on the floor, and I finally got him under a shower, and he shivered and shook and vomited something awful. Doc Solomon come then and said leave him vomit. I said there was little else you could do, for you can not give a man an order not to vomit. Doc Solomon left, and Bruce shook and shivered and vomited, and between times he laced into Doc Solomon, calling him a Jew and what not else.
“He was at the heights when all of a sudden in walked Mike Mulrooney, and it was Mike that calmed him down, handing out the sweet talk and saying what a great ballplayer Bruce was. He went right in there under the shower and turned it off and crouched down on the wet floor with Bruce, and they talked about the good times they had back in QC. Soon Bruce come out just as calm as if he was sober, and Mike talked to him some more and held his hand and patted his shoulder.
“Then Dutch yelled “Back to work!” and I went.
“That night I seen Bruce at the hotel, and he was as nice and polite as ever, and quiet, and when he spoke he spoke soft, and you could hardly believe it was the same man. From that day onwards he settled down and done his work, like he was told, and you never heard so much as a peep from him the season through.”
ON THE main drag in Bainbridge quite a few people give him a wave, and we slowed, and they said, “All fixed up?” and he said “Yes,” and we moved on through town. The roster lists him from Bainbridge, but actually he lives in Mill on the road to Climax, which got its name on account of an old mill there that long ago broke down. You can see it from his window, and every so often you might see somebody come along needing a board and cut across to the mill and rip one off. This been going on for years and years until one day there won’t be any mill left a-tall. One night I said, “That is one mill that ain’t milling around much any more,” and Bruce’s father said, “Yes, Arthur, and that is an old joke, too.” Bruce clumb all over that mill as a kid and still knows all the places for your feet. He goes up the top of it in about 15 seconds flat, and down again as fast, and he knows 100 secret little corners where they hid money and tobacco and letters from girls and other things they weren’t supposed to own, and we went on through Bainbridge and down the road to Mill.
We got there before I realized it. I was looking for a town. He give me the impression they lived in a town, and then it wasn’t a town a-tall but only a house off the road, white, with the sun hot on it, and his folks on the porch swatting flies, not knowing he was expected. On the nail by the door they keep these fly swatters. When you come out of doors you grab one. You get to do it automatic, like grabbing a bat when your swipes come, and then when you go back in you loop it over the nail again.
They didn’t much stir when we pulled up, only sat and waited, and he jumped on the porch, never mind the steps, and kissed them and said, “This here is Henry, call him Arthur,” and his father went in the house and dragged out 2 more chairs and
2
more swatters, and we all sat. All their business is done on the porch. After awhile the girl brung out 2 more glasses and laid them on the rail, and she said, “Howdy, Mr. Bruce, are you all better now?” and he never turned around but said “Yes.” He might turn around for a white person sometime, but hardly ever for a colored one, and she poured water in the glasses. They wobbled a little, but they never fell, not then or ever all the time I was there, just sat balanced on the rail.
Such business as they do they do it slow, first a little sip of water and then a word or 2, and then no answer for a time until a word or 2 from someone else. It gets very r
estful
, just sitting looking at the road and drinking water until when the water was gone his mother shouted back over her shoulder “Gem!” and the girl come out pretty soon again with more water.
“We were worried,” his father said. One of his suspenders was always hanging loose, and I kept getting these terrific urges to get up and pull the hidget tight. Then everybody pulled on water awhile.
“I was in good hands,” Bruce said. He balanced his hat on the rail, and curled up his tie and laid it on top of the hat. His mother took a sip of water and reached for the tie and uncurled it and smoothed it out and laid it straight on the rail. She was quite fat, with these extremely enormous breasts. When she was young she was quite thin and pretty. In their old photos she was thin and her husband heavy, but when times become easy for them she put on and he shed. She died last summer and never knew the truth, heart failure, 100 pounds over her weight, which maybe was what killed her, plus the excitement of the race.
“I bet it was cold up there,” she said.
Everybody thought these various matters over, and then all of a sudden they all stood up and picked up their chair and went back in and hung their swatter up and shoved in at the table and ate. Do not ask me how they knew it was time, but they always did. Night after night I listened for some sign or signal, thinking maybe there was a certain shadow fell a certain place, or a certain car went by, or a certain train whistle, but I could never figure it. I just ate, and it was good, too much of the same too many nights in a row maybe, but very good, and after we ate we picked up our chair again and grabbed a swatter and went back out of doors.
“Not too damn cold,” he said.
We sat awhile and swatted awhile, and it begun growing dark, and every now and then a car come past and stopped and said, “We seen where Bruce is home,” and they said, “He sure is,” and told me who was in the car. “That was Wilkies,” “That was Johnsons,” and Gem come out with 4 glasses and laid them on the rail and poured, all in the dark, and she gathered up the swatters because you couldn’t see what you were swatting at any more anyhow, and right about then a car always drawed up and sat and waited for her. The same car brung her back in the morning, and she got out and took the glasses off the rail and went around the house and in, 7 days a week, every goddam day. The glasses were all wet with dew in the morning.
“What was wrong?” his father said.
“Nothing,” he said. He only sent them postcards, picture but no message, all different views of Rochester, Minnesota, but only 3 words, “Pearson, Mill, Georgia,” and the rest only a white space. Sometimes he picked up a card and studied the picture, squinting close and looking for something in it that nobody else could find, like maybe a man might sit studying moving pictures of a particular ball game and trying to figure out what he threw wrong to a particular hitter, and wishing he could back up the film and have another try.
“There was a kid I played with with his hair parted in the middle,” he said.
She told him the kid’s name and where he was now and what doing, and he told it to me though I was sitting there and heard it myself and couldn’t of cared less, and soon they begun yawning, and one of them would say, “It is about time to hunker down,” and then another would yawn and say it, and later another, and then his mother dragged her chair in and made me up the bed in the guest room and afterwards come back in her robe and slippers and said through the screen, “It is about time to hunker down,” and then we all got up and dragged our chair in, Bruce last, leaning his chair against the door, not locking it, only keeping it from rattling.
There was a table by my bed that every night I laid out on it 2 pages typewrote by the doctors in Rochester, the first page headed “Until the doctor comes,” the second “Instructions for the physician.” On the back I wrote down the numbers of the doctors in Bainbridge. In the morning I always stuck it back in my pants.
I never slept much the first night, only laid waiting. He kept his light on a long time, though what he done there I have no idea because he don’t read and don’t listen to the radio much. In the hotel he likes to sit in the dark and look down in the street at the traffic or across the way at lights in another hotel, and he likes to watch the flashing signs. Sometimes he spits and gets up on his elbow and watches how it floats, if it incurves or outcurves, and whatever way it hooks he turns and tells me, and probably 9,000 times I told him, “Who gives a good goddam how your spit hooks?”
About 2 days later Holly sent down my contract in the mail. His was there when we got there, $7,540 or 7,860 or 7,695, always some crazy amount like that every year which give him the idea the club sat around all winter figuring out exactly what he was worth, boiling it down to the penny, and he signed it and stuck it back out in the box. You always see in the paper what contracts are back and signed, and somewhere amongst them you might find his name. Or then again you might not. There are writers that don’t even know he is with the club, and ballplayers on other clubs the same that call everybody by their name but Bruce because if they once knew it they keep forgetting, shouting at him maybe for a stray ball, “Hey, catcher.” There was never much to keep them remembering. He been up there a long time, yet nobody ever really knows him. I doubt that anybody even keeps a book on him. Between times they forget, and then sometimes I suppose they wish they did, for he will bounce a pitch off a fence now and then, if it was the kind of a pitch he was looking for. He decides ahead of time what kind of a pitch is coming, and if it comes it is his meat. If it don’t he is lost. He cannot guess a pitcher, cannot remember what that same pitcher threw him the last time. He cannot hit to the opposite field, only to left, and will stand up there driving pitches to left no matter if a 100-mile tornado is blowing in, or at least he would if Dutch ever left him try. But Dutch will never use him with a wind in from left.