Bang The Drum Slowly (7 page)

THE TALK of the camp last spring was a kid name of Piney Woods, a wild and crazy catcher out of a place called Good Hope, Georgia, that the writers all called “Dutch’s good hope from Good Hope” until it become obvious that he could not last. Back he went to QC in April, and we went into the year with the same 3 catchers we finished 54 with, Goose and Bruce and Jonah Brooks. Jonah come up from QC when Red split his finger in St. Paul, Minnesota, that time, a fine boy, just fine, always singing. 13 runs behind and he will still be singing, calling “Wing her through, Author, wing her through,” and then after a good pitch singing, “Author wung her through, he wung her through,” except when now and then he thought the call was wrong, and then sung, “Oh-o-o-o Lord my big black ass,” his jaw always going and his mind always working, his eye everywhere, a natural catcher if ever I seen one, except he could not hit.

For a time it looked like Piney Woods might be the answer. He can hit. But he is no natural. He is too wild and crazy. He drives in motorcycle races in the winter. Dutch was looking for a combination of a natural catcher like Jonah and a hitter like Piney, and still is. I guess there is only one Red Traphagen in a lifetime.

*   *   *

The first few days me and Lucky Judkins sat in the stands watching the drill and lying about money, telling each other how much we were holding out for. I don’t know why you lie about money. I guess you figure people figure you are lying, so you might as well. One morning Ugly Jones dumb up from the field and said, “Author, leave me give you one piece of advice. Do not hang in the park because your eye gleams and your hand itches. You are becoming anxious to play ball, and this will cost you money,” which was true. I mean it was true I was becoming gleamy, I guess. Ugly is a wise old hand, veteran of many a holdout, and I went back to the house, and we swum and laid on the beach and played badminton and waited for the telephone to ring, and every time it rung I said, “This is Old Man Moors meeting my price,” but it never was, and to myself I thought, “This is Bruce. The attack come.” But it was never Bruce neither. It was writers, or one of the boys, or Joe Jaros wishing to play Tegwar. The boys phoned a lot, or dropped by, and I kept in touch. My weight kept going up something awful.

The real bomb-burst was Lucky getting swapped to Cincinnati for F. D. R. Caselli, a right-hand pitcher and a good boy, a cousin by marriage of Gussie Petronio, the Mammoth catcher before Red, leaving me the last and only holdout. I might of went out of my mind a little if there been any left-hand pitching in camp, but there was none, 90 boys that threw with their left hand maybe, but none that threw very hard or very smart, and I sat tight. The boys were all with me, down to the last penny.

It all dragged on so long I said to Holly, “Am I a baseball player or only a man living on the beach at Aqua Clara?” and she said, “What difference?” Everything you said to her any more she said, “What difference?” meaning lay in the sun and enjoy life. She was happy. I never seen her so still before. She is usually always running around doing 77 things at once, hanging with the wives, reading books, studying taxes, cleaning the house, gassing on the phone, but now she done nothing only laid on the beach and looked at the waves. Now and then she took a dip and flipped over and left the waves wash her in, and then she laid on the sand again and browned up, and nights she got all dressed for Bruce.

He come down every night after work. You could see him from far off, walking along and looking at the waves and whistling “Come Josephine In My Flying Machine,” which the boys all sung in honor of Piney and his stupid motorcycle. Piney himself sung it every time you asked him, closing his eyes, not laughing, thinking you loved hearing it for the singing, when the reason you loved it was he took it so serious, singing—

He always dragged a stick in the sand behind him. He parked it by the door and come in and ate, salads for me mostly, and lean meat and no bread and butter and this disgusting skim milk, my weight at 209 by now and climbing a mile a minute, and when we was done we sat out back, out of the ocean breeze, until along about 10 he went around the house for his stick, and I drove him back to the Silver Palms.

In the hotel we shoved his bed around near the phone, and I wrote my number on a piece of paper and tacked it on the wall, and he said, “I hope if it happens it will not happen at a bad hour,” and I said, “It might or might not probably never happen. I have no faith in those cockeyed doctors up there. But if it happens do not stop and check the time, just call me,” and he said he would.

I begun selling policies to kill the time. I drove down to St. Pete every couple days, and Tampa and Clearwater, and over to Lakeland once, never pushing, only chatting with the various boys and leaving it sell itself, which it does once you put the idea in their mind. All spring they see too many old-time ballplayers floating from camp to camp and putting the touch on old friends, maybe giving a pointer to a kid and then saying, “By the way, could you advance me 5 until the first of the month?” which kids often do, probably writing home, “Oh boy, I just had the privilege of loaning 5 to So-and-so,” until after they loaned out enough 5’s it did not seem so much like a privilege any more.

I drove Lucky down to Tampa the day he was traded. Lucky was the second person I ever sold an annuity to, and he said, “Well, Author, one day we will all be done working. We will just fish and look in the box once a month for the checks, me and you and Bruce and all the rest,” and I almost told him, for it was getting hard to carry it around. But I smothered it back. Once you told somebody everybody would know, and once Dutch knew it would of been “Goodby, Bruce.” “It is hard picturing you in a Cincinnati suit,” I said. In the lobby of The Floridian I got to gassing with Brick Brickell, the manager of Cincinnati. “You are holding out serious,” he said. “For what?”

“$27,500,” I said.

“You will never get it,” he said. Then he looked around to see if anybody was listening.
“We
would pay it,” he said.

“I doubt that,” I said.

“Try me,” he said. “Hold out long enough and we will buy you, and I give you my verbal word we will pay you 25,000 at the least. I been trying to buy you already.”

“What are they asking?” I said.

“A quarter of a million dollars and players,” he said.

“What will they take?” I said.

“150,000 and players,” he said.

“What will you give?” said I.

“Now, Author,” he said, “I cannot reveal a thing of that sort. The trouble is that they want Sam Mott. Dutch is worried about his catching.”

“Does he not worry about his left-hand pitching?” I said.

“Brooklyn will sell him Scudder,” he said, “but only if you are gone, not wishing to cut their own throat.”

I drove F. D. R. Caselli back with me, jabbering all the way, him I mean, and all the time he jabbered I kept making up these little conversations where Old Man Moors called me on the phone, pleading with me, “Come on and sign. I will meet your price,” until I was just about ready to call him myself. But then again I told myself, “No! Do not sell yourself short!” F. D. R. had blisters on his hands, and he kept asking me what was good for them, and I told him something or other. I forget what.

All spring the wives kept pumping Holly full of miserable stories about babies born with this or that missing, and mothers suffering, which if she ever believed any of it she would of went wild. But she never believes what people say, and all that happened I kept getting as fat as a pig until what we done we bought a badminton set and played badminton all day, deductible, for my weight is a matter of business. By the middle of March I was probably the world’s champion heavyweight left-hand badminton player, and still no call from the boss.

One day the club said it was definitely closing a deal with Cleveland for Rob McKenna, saying this on a Friday night for the Saturday paper and leaving no chance for anybody to deny it on Sunday, for they have no Sunday paper in Aqua Clara, and putting all the writers a little bit on the spot since they hated calling Cleveland all the way out in Arizona to check on the truth of what they already probably knew was the bunk. This scared me, though, and I went to the phone, and the instant I touched it it rung, and a voice said, “Do not touch that phone!” It was Ugly Jones. “Author,” he said, “you are doing fine.”

“I am fatter than a pig,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “That is the way to convince them, for it worries them more than it worries you. It might not even be a bad idea to show yourself around. Leave the brass see how fat you are.”

What we done we went out the park the following Wednesday and sat in the stands behind first. There was about 6 left-handers warming, a few wearing QC suits that been up the spring before, the rest wearing Mammoth shirts, one kid wearing my number, 44, kids, all kids, and all full of hope.

Old Man Moors and Patricia and some automobile people up from Miami strolled in and sat down, Bradley Lord joining them soon after. Patricia said “Hello” and asked Holly how she was. Her and Holly gassed awhile, and then she went back. Old Man Moors glanced up my way, pretending he was looking over the paint job on the park, and I called for peanuts, which fat you up about a pound for a dime, and I begun munching away.

The first left-hander set George and Perry down 1–2, and the peanuts went dry in my mouth a little. Pasquale then took 2 strikes and belted one out amongst the palms, and I give a little look down at the Moorses and scarcely had time to look back when Sid hit one that fell not 4 feet from where Pasquale’s went, back-to-back homers from the power factory, always a nice sight, and Canada shot a single into left, and Piney one into right. Dutch shouted, “I seen enough of that one,” waving the left-hander out of there and bringing on a new one, a tall, thin kid with a dizzy habit of wearing his glove with 3 fingers out. He walked Vincent and Ugly and hit Herb Macy on the butt until when he finally found the plate George blasted one back at him that bounced off his knee and blooped out over second base, and the poor kid was lugged off on a stretcher. Another one went out the same way the same day.

Once Dutch looked up at me, and I waved. He did not wave back. He takes it as a personal insult. Behind your back he tells you, “Sure, sock it to them for every nickel you are worth,” but when you do he does not like it, though he himself was a holdout more than once in his playing days, and anyhow he was quite busy waving one left-hander out and a new one in, about 5 of them before a kid come on in the sixth and struck Sid and Canada out. The Moorses begun shaking their head “Yes” between themself, Bradley Lord shaking his, too, as soon as he seen it was safe, The World’s Only Living Human Spineless Skunk. This newest kid was rather fast, but no curve whatsoever, and I said to Holly, “The boys see that he has no curve by now,” which they did all right. Piney and Vincent singled. Ugly stepped in, looking up my way and giving me a kind of a wink and taking a couple and then lacing a drive down the line in right that the whole park busted out laughing over because it slammed up against the fence and stuck there, this old rat-trap fence made of boards, the drive getting jammed in between 2 boards. The right-fielder went over and tried to wedge it out. But it was in tight, and Ugly trotted around the bases laughing, and even Dutch was laughing, and by then the Moorses and the people from Miami were laughing, and Bradley Lord, too, seeing all the rest, and about one minute later Lindon bounced one off the same fence that knocked the first ball through, and Mr. Left-Hander Number 6 went off to the shower. You really had to laugh. I mean, when a ball slams up against a fence your eye is back out on the field, looking for the rebounce, and then when it don’t you think the whole world has went flooey or something, like when you drop a shoe you hear it clunk, and if no clunk comes you quick dial the madhouse. Every so often I begun to laugh, and Holly, too, and Old Man Moors turned around and give me a look, and me and Holly got up about then and yawned and stretched and bought a couple more peanuts and went home and waited for the phone to ring.

After supper it rung, and I sat beside it and left it ring 12 or 13 times until I picked it up and said in my most boring voice, “Fishing pier. Hookworms for sale,” only it wasn’t Old Man Moors a-tall but Joe Jaros, and he said, “Author, how about a hand of Tegwar or 2?”

I already turned him down a number of times, not wishing to hang in the hotel and look anxious, but I was in the mood now, and I said, “We will be right down.”

“Who do you mean by “we”?” he said, and I said I meant me and Bruce. “Me and Bruce been playing quite a bit all winter,” I said. “He is pretty good by now,” though this was not true, for he was not.