Indianapolis March 3. Manager Hendricks of the Indians today bought outright the release of Harry Purcell of the Ionia club of the Central League. Purcell was the champion slugger on the circuit, completing the 1921 season with a batting average of .386, which was twenty-five points higher than his closest rival.
If you’re of a certain age and you lived in Hartford or Indianapolis or Nashville and you opened a newspaper, you will know my name — Bish — for Bishop Weatherly. Silas Weatherly — a true bishop and my namesake — was the only godly man on our family tree, and the only literate one for a spell. My father believed I’d carry his mantle. Instead, I carried a pencil and a grudge.
But this story is not about me. If you lived in any of those towns and opened those papers and found my byline, you will remember Harry ‘Cotton’ Purcell, the prodigious slugger who roamed the gardens of many a ballpark. You never saw a word about Grace, his wife, but she was there. He was my hero and she was grace itself. I followed them north to New Haven. Then the timetables and the deadlines, the Sunday doubleheaders and the getaway days, set us on separate tracks and now and then dropped us at the same station. Why? Who can say? All I know is that I bore witness to glory and defeat, to love and tears. You didn’t come here for a box score. You came to hear the ballad of Cotton and Grace.
Grace’s note landed on my desk at the Indianapolis Star while I was banging out a short piece about the Bellows Street fire. I didn’t play up the bellows angle. That sort of irony was Brady’s style, not mine. He was down in Marlin Springs with the Tribe while I was in Indy watching houses go up in flames. I let him go to Texas in my stead because I’d heard Cotton Purcell was joining the team there.
I knew Grace would soon arrive in town alone. For almost three weeks, I imagined her seeing my name in the Star. I imagined her remembering me fondly and with a tinge of regret.
Imagination will make a fool of a man quicker than whiskey.
Then came the note, hand-delivered by Cecil, the copy boy.
“You smell like a furnace,” Cecil said.
The house fire smoke clung to my hair, my shirt, everything I wore. I checked my notes. “Not as bad as Mrs. Everett Fraser of 2410 Bellows Street,” I said. She’d leapt from the second-story window into the Browder net — her housecoat trailing plumes — and after some aid and comfort she stood under an umbrella beside her husband. The sad couple watched the roof cave in and send a shower of sparks into the afternoon drizzle. They stood beside a meager pile saved from the conflagration: a sewing machine, two dining-table chairs, a hat rack, and a Victor phonograph scorched black along the side.
I can quote Grace’s note, because I have it still. Her hand is distinct — the Ts crossed with a sweeping stroke and the g with its flamboyant tail.
Bish, my dear, you are a funny man! And I quote: “Indiana Harbor is to be rid of the cement dust nuisance which overhangs the city like a pall…Barbers raised their prices saying the cement dust got into the whiskers of the men and shortened the life of a razor…” I read to Tina about the whiskers and the razors and we had a glorious laugh. (Father, bless his heart, sent Tina to care for Malcolm since I’m in a delicate condition.) We’re all a jumble together in two rooms waiting for Harry’s return. We’re stranded, Bish. Who knows where these streetcars go? Do you still have your Maxwell. I still enjoy hot fudge on my ice cream and salted nuts. Sharpen your razor and shave your handsome face and come around one day to see us. Tina remembers our Tampa days. We’re in the blue house by the water tower on Wilson Street.
Yours truly, Grace Purcell
My Maxwell was parked in the Star’s garage, fueled up, and shiny from a fresh waxing in anticipation of Grace’s arrival. I sent Cecil off with the Bellows Street fire story, donned my coat and hat and took the stairs at a trot.
When I got a glimpse of the water tower looming over the steep roof of the blue house, I lost my nerve. The gray sky was spitting drizzle. Black umbrellas bobbed along on the sidewalks. It was only four in the afternoon, but yellow headlamps flowed toward me on the river road. I stank of smoke. What kind of impression would that make on a lady?
I slowed the Maxwell. I had Grace’s note in my pocket and her name on my tongue. But I didn’t stop. I bounced over the railroad tracks, found Henry Street, and motored to Mabel’s place.
Grace was waiting in the shadow of the tower—lonely, pregnant, stranded far from home. I told myself I needed a clean collar. A tonic. Some time. Anything but the truth: I wasn’t ready to stand face to face with what I’d already lost.
I’m ashamed to say Grace’s note didn’t lead me to her. It led me to my favorite blind tiger.
Blind, I was not. Mabel was a lovely woman, a decade older than I, but well-preserved in all the ways that mattered to a man of my tastes. She was alone with her two-headed pig when I got there.
“What brings you around at this ungodly hour of the afternoon?” she said.
I heard a clatter and looked into the gloom of the pool parlor and saw Mabel’s son watching the balls slowly roll to a stop on the felt. So, we weren’t alone. Just as well. Curtis stood under the lamp chalking his cue. He was all of fourteen, but I wouldn’t play him for money or rum.
I pulled my flask from my pocket and tipped it to show Mabel how dry it was.
“A house burned to the ground before my very eyes today,” I said.
Mabel reached under the counter and slid the panel aside. In went my flask and a five spot. Slap went the panel. The sound was almost as satisfying as a sip of Mabel’s elixir.
“Some men would pay good money to watch a show like that,” she said. Mabel had raven hair cut short in the new fashion. A curl lay on her pale cheek. Her long thin nose tilted slightly to the left. I once asked her how it got that way. She told me not to be nosy, but I’d wager there was blood and whiskey involved.
She stepped through the curtains into the back room. I found a table in a corner where I could watch the door and the stuffed pig and listen to Curtis knock the balls around. I took a pencil and notebook from my pocket. Mabel came by with an empty cup and saucer. My flask appeared from under her apron.
She said, “I thought you were bound for Texas.”
“I thought so, too,” I said, “but I would’ve missed you if I went.”
She set the flask on the table. “You’d miss something. But it wouldn’t be me.”
I filled my tea cup, took a sip, and scratched out a note.
Dear Grace,
No pall hangs over our fair city now that you’ve arrived. The barbers’ blades are shiny and sharp. May I come around tomorrow afternoon to call on you? I will give you a grand tour of Indy. I bet Malcolm likes hot fudge on his ice cream, too. Allow me to treat y’all. Send word back via my young friend, Curtis.
Yours, Bish
P.S. I heard Harry hit a triple yesterday and stole a base. Hendricks is high on him.
I watched Curtis tap the eight ball into the corner pocket. I took a sip from my cup. What I said about Harry’s triple was true. I failed to mention two dropped fly balls. Not for Harry’s sake, but for Grace’s.
I called Curtis over and asked him to run up to the blue house on Wilson Street with my note. The kid got his good looks from his mama and his billiards skills from his old man, who’d run off long before I came to town.
“Give this to the red-haired lady who lives there. Ask for Grace. She’s the pretty one.”
“You know a pretty lady?” Curtis said.
I flipped a quarter his way and he snatched it out of the air.
“One or two,” I said.
He pocketed my note and sauntered out.
Harry hit .386 last season and he hit a triple yesterday, but Grace was — how did she put it? — jumbled together with her boy and servant woman — in a ramshackle house between the river and the railroad tracks. A man like me can get used to the stench of oil and coal smoke, chicken coops and hog pens, but I wouldn’t wish such a life on a woman like Grace.
When Curtis ambled in a half hour later, my flask was half empty.
He said, “Why didn’t you say she was knocked up?”
He handed me a note. I opened it.
Why thank you, Bish! One o’clock?
I filled my tea cup almost to the brim and raised it Curtis’ way. “I failed to mention Mrs. Purcell’s condition, Curtis, because I’m a gentleman through and through.”
He went to the pool table and set about racking the balls. As he lifted the frame, he muttered, “That’s not what Mama said.”
In the morning I sat in my room perusing the paper, nursing my heavy head, and counting the hours until one. Mabel’s place had filled up with Irish gents in a festive St. Patrick’s Day mood. Who can blame me for being swept up in the revelry? I remember making more than one toast to Grace Galloway Purcell. To her lovely red hair and her smiling eyes and to one or two things I’m ashamed to admit in the sober light of day.
Through my window I could see the Wilson Street water tower rising over the rooftops and lumber yards. I’d never paid it any mind before Grace’s note came to hand. Now it was a beacon. The blue house beneath it pulled my eye from the page as I tried to read Brady’s dispatch from Marlin Springs.
Halfway through a story about Harry’s battle with Spencer and Brown for the center field job, my gut got tight. Last night’s whiskey and the thought of Harry’s bad shoulder made me wince. It might be wise for Hendricks to move Cotton to left, I thought.
I folded the paper closed and tossed it on the table. A familiar ache stirred in me. Something older than a yearning for whiskey. It was the ancient ache I felt as a kid in Columbia, Alabama watching Cotton Purcell saunter toward the batter’s box. The whole town leaned forward then, hungry for the crack of Harry’s bat, for the sight of the ball rising into the blue air and vanishing and falling like light into the weeds beyond the fence. I penned that line — “falling like light” — for a short story about those ballgames. I sent it to The Saturday Evening Post. I don’t know what makes me wince more — my audacity or the letter from the editor that my mother put beside my plate at dinner, expecting good news.
Now I ached for Harry to make the Indians — for his sake, for Grace’s — and for my own poor reasons, selfish as they were. I wanted to sit at this very window through long summer Sunday mornings and watch the tall shadow of the water tower glide over the roof of the house where Grace lived.
I shaved and put on a clean shirt and a turned-down collar, chose my crimson tie and went to work on a four-in-hand. The mirror didn’t do my face any favors. Would Grace notice the puffy eyes? The hairline heading north? How long had it been? Three years, at least since Hartford and Harry’s stint with the Senators and my days on the Courant. I turned this way and that and looked for the handsome man Grace might remember. He was there, but he looked rough. As I raked my hair with my comb, I said, Relax Bish, she’s married. And knocked up, to boot.
I slipped my flask into my jacket pocket and donned the old skimmer. It smelled of smoke. An ashy taste filled my mouth. On Bellows Street the flames poured through the windows and cast a ghastly light on the lawn. The heat drove me back to the curb as the roof caved in and sent a shower of orange sparks over a gaunt, hat-less man, over his pale wife, and over the few smoke smudged things they’d managed to save.