Marlin Springs, Tex., March 17 One of the best catches of the spring trip was a one-handed capture by Purcell in the fifth inning with two men on the bases. After a hard run into deep right field while going at terrific speed Purcell reached out and captured the ball. It was the best bit of fielding he has done for the Tribe. But Manager Hendricks said Rehg, Morrison and Spenser will probably fill the outfield when the Tribe takes on the New York Giants in Galveston next week.
As the Maxwell shuddered to a stop at the curb, I saw a boy of four or five pulling a toy truck by a string across a ragged lawn. He had Harry’s blond hair and small ears pressed to the side of his head, like God had ironed them flat. In Columbia, you could tell the Purcell cousins from a block away. They were taller and cleaner than the kids around them. Their clothes fit better. We all bought our clothes at Purcell Mercantile, but our fathers didn’t own the store or three thousand acres of prime cotton land along the Chattahoochee. Our fathers didn’t donate the land for the Methodist Church and pay for the lumber and copper that crowned its steeple. We were Baptists and we wore hand-me-down shoes or went without.
I stepped from the car. The stench of hog pens hung in the air. I could hear the rumble of a slow-rolling train. Tina’s deep voice called out of the shadows of the porch. “Afternoon Mr. Bish!”
The screen door swung open and Grace glided out wearing a jade green dress and a wide brimmed hat a shade darker than a hen’s egg. Her auburn hair tumbled to her throat. She held an alligator purse with two hands, her arms covering her belly.
I tipped my hat. My smile felt as wide as a church door.
“We’ve been lonely for a familiar face,” she said. “Haven’t we, Tina?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Tina said.
I offered my hand to the boy on the lawn. “You must be Malcolm.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. He gave me his little hand to shake. “Are you the funny man?”
Grace came down the steps to greet me. Her dress was trimmed in red ribbon.
Malcolm said, “Is he the man who made you laugh?”
She gave me her hand. “Your razor story had us in stitches, Bish”
I bowed and passed my lips within an inch of her wrist. “Welcome to Indianapolis,” I said.
Grace giggled at my show of gallantry. I can be funny when I try.
Malcolm put his face against his mother’s skirt.
“Ice cream later,” she said. “Now it’s time to lie down. Tina?”
Tina started down the stairs. I expected some whining out of the boy, but he went to her without a word of protest.
“We’ll meet y’all at that little place on the corner. By the music store. Three-thirty?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Tina said. “Pleasure to see you, Mr. Bish.”
“All mine, Tina.”
She led Malcolm up the stairs. Neither of them gave us a backward glance.
In the car, Grace said, “Happy Saint Pat’s.” She ran her hand over her belly. “I wanted to wear my green dress for you. But have I gotten too big? Am I being scandalous riding around like this?”
I looked at her dress from its long collar to its hem trimmed in red ribbon to her pale stockings to the buckles on her shoes. I said, “It’s a pretty dress. You make it prettier. Is it Saint Patrick’s?”
“Look at your poor face! You know what day it is. Harry wakes up with a face like yours almost every Sunday morning, game or no game. Who are you trying to fool?”
Grace reached in her purse and plucked out a scrap of folded newspaper. She passed it my way. I thought it might be an article of mine. Or a story about Harry. But no. Houses for rent torn from the want ads. She’d circled three addresses.
“Let’s drive by. Just to look,” she said.
I’d been in Indy for less than a year, but I knew the neighborhoods. Scenes of mayhem, mostly. Near the first address, an ice truck ran down a little girl. Two blocks from the second, a lady shot at her husband, missed, and hit an innocent dog sleeping on a porch. On Bellows, a house went up in flames.
I tapped the third house Grace had circled. “I was on that street yesterday,” I said.
It was a bright, blue sky day, but the air had a mid-March bite to it. I found a blanket behind the seat and draped it over Grace’s shoulders.
“Remember that first spring in Hartford?” she said. “We about froze to death!” She made a mock-shiver.
Harry signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1917, but washed out and landed on the Senators of the Eastern League. He and Grace and one year-old Malcolm lived in a drafty house with a broken boiler. I came North and found a desk on the Hartford Courant. I covered almost every game that summer. Harry hit in the low .300s and led the Eastern League in stolen bases. All through August, I expected Harry would get a telegram from Pittsburgh, but it never came.
I drove downtown and circled the Soldier’s and Sailor’s monument. Grace took off her hat so she could stick her head all the way out the window to look at the lady with the torch and sword on top.
“You cut your hair,” I said. When I met Grace her hair fell almost to her waist. She seemed unaware of the beauty of her eyes and finely drawn nose and her smile, but she was vain about her long auburn tresses.
“Those are Yankees, aren’t they?” she said, pointing at the statues of men with long guns and Forage caps.
Mabel’s short hair had a certain appeal to me, especially after a few snorts from my flask, but Grace’s bob broke my heart.
“It’s a memorial to the dead ones,” I said.
Grace pulled her head inside and ran her fingers through her hair. She set her hat at a jaunty angle and said, “Tina wept when came I home from the beauty parlor. She won’t forgive me until her dying day.”
As we motored toward the scene of the ice-truck accident, I said, “Have you heard from Harry?”
“You know Harry,” Grace said.
Sometimes I wondered whether I knew the man or not, but I knew what Grace meant. I felt obliged to defend my old friend. “He’s got his hands full making the team. He’s up against two men who played in the World Series last year.”
“He writes, Bish. But his letters give me fits. He’s taken a dislike to a catcher and a coach. He almost came to blows with an umpire. In a practice game. Now I let Tina to read the nice parts out loud to Malcolm and me.”
I drove beside the street car tracks. We passed a billboard offering Sen Sen Gum in assorted flavors.
I asked her, “What do the nice parts say?”
“He gets a dollar-fifty a day for meals. And he’ll get a raise to $350 a month if he makes the starting team. He says he will. And he never forgets to say Love, Cotton.” She looked down at the scrap of paper in her hand. “He’s a grown man, Bish. With a wife and a child.” Her hand lay on her green dress.
I looked back at the road.
“And another on the way. And he signs his letters, Cotton.”
“He’s a ballplayer,” I said, “They …”
“It’s all your fault, Bish.”
I took my eyes off the road and looked at her. Her face looked lovely and sad in the bright sunlight, but there was something else — a glint of anger, sharp as a razor — in her eye.
“Mine?” I said.
“You know it is, Bish. You gave him that name.”
We drove on down a sunny street past stout brick houses and trim hedges and tall turreted Victorians painted robin’s egg blue. Mulberry trees spread bare branches over the road. The milk truck ahead of us pulled to the curb. I turned down Washington Boulevard and headed toward the river. Foundry smokestacks rose over the long roofs of warehouses. We slowed for a horse drawn wagon hauling sacks of grain.
“Everything is different up here. Even the air,” Grace said. “I thought you were fooling about the cement dust.”
“Barbers raised their prices,” I said. “That’s a fact.”
She unfolded the scrap of newspaper. “Seventy-two Garron Way,” she said.
I drove past the scene of the ice-truck accident and remembered the dented fender and the ice dripping into the street, mixing with the blood. I slowed the Maxwell.
“Oh no,” Grace said, peering out the window from under her hat.
I pulled to the curb in front of a tall gray house. Moss grew on the north facing roof shingles. The side porch stairs tilted in three directions. The hole in an attic window looked to be about the size of a jagged grapefruit.
“How much is it?” I asked.
Grace gazed out the window and said, “It’s an absolute shack, Bish. It leapt right out of one your old stories.” She turned to me and said, “I never knew why you wanted to write about people like that.”
“People like what?” I said.
“Like that boy who shot turtles in the river just for fun.” Her voice, low and slow with disappointment, faded as she said, just for fun. She turned to look at the gray house and I wasn’t sure if she was disappointed in the mossy roof or the dust of Indianapolis or Harry’s letters. Or me.
I was that boy. I remember sitting on a railroad trestle on Cinnamon Creek north of Columbia, my rifle in my lap, a jar of hooch beside me. I was sixteen. Skinny. Jug eared. Bored. I had a box of shells and a good two hours until the next train was due. A few years later, I wrote about taking aim at the turtle heads that rose to the surface. About squeezing the trigger and hearing the sharp report echo over the water and watching the pale turtle shells sink in the muddy current. “Cinnamon Girl.” Century Magazine paid me money for my story — a hundred and fifty dollars. Not even Grace could make me feel bad about that.
“Do you want to look in the windows?” I said. “It might be…”
“Haunted!” Grace said. “It’s giving me nightmares from here. Proceed.” She flurried both hands toward the windshield.
We proceeded up Illinois Avenue past a sprawling hospital, white awnings shading the windows. On the corner, a pretzel vendor stood in a cloud of steam. He raised his tongs and clapped them our way.
Grace said, “My mouth runs away with itself. Don’t pout.”
I wasn’t pouting.
“I liked your story … remember? About the old woman who was jealous of all her kin folk who died year after year and filled up the family graveyard. And left no room for her.”
“She never forgave them,” I said. “Resting Places” was based on a true story, too. About my meemah on my mother’s side.
“I laughed out loud at that one,” Grace said.
Century illustrated that story with a drawing of tombstones under a spreading tree with a wrought iron fence and a fat sun setting over the valley below. They sent a check for two-hundred, the last check I ever got for my fiction. I went to work for the Tampa Tribune, hoping to find a story big enough to turn into a novel. The news came my way, but a novel never did.
“Temple Road,” Grace said. “Number eleven.”
We crossed the tracks and passed a school house with an empty ball field beside it and about an acre of mowed lawn. Hawthorne trees lined the street. A dog loped along beside us as we slowed to study the numbers on Temple Road.
Grace said, “My baby’s due in June. I’d like to take her home to a real house.” She passed her hand lightly over her dress where it rose like a green hillock. In the bright sunlight, I could see a fine dusting of powder on her cheek and fine lines in the corner of her eye.
“Her?” I said, imagining something swaddled in pink. I’d rather we were talking about Meemah’s graveyard or shooting turtles from a railroad trestle.
“I pray for a girl,” Grace said. “I’ll call her Barbara for Harry’s mother.”
I knew Harry’s mother, Bobbie. She was a Kaigler out of Georgetown, Georgia. From a family of doctors and senators. Like the Purcells, they kept their cotton land after the war. Bobbie Purcell was renowned for her dark-haired beauty and her charity. My father wrote the notice when she died at thirty-seven.
“Pretty name,” I said.
We came to a stop in front of a white-frame bungalow set well back from the street. Four steps led up to a walk bordered by shoulder-high camellia bushes, heavy with white blossoms. The porch posts were painted green — darker than Grace’s dress but lighter than the waxy camellia leaves. Grace flung her door open and ducked out of the Maxwell. She stood on the curb, one hand holding her hat, the other resting on her swollen belly. “Don’t you love it?”
I crawled out of the car and went to her. She took my hand and squeezed it. “Don’t you just love it?”
I followed Grace along the path beside the camellias to the porch. Worn patches on the boards showed where a table and chairs recently stood. The front door wore a fresh coat of green paint. Grace went to a window and cupped her hands around her face.
“The mantel, Bish.”
I stood beside her, cupped my hands, and looked at the mantel. It was ornately carved out of dark wood. A carriage clock stood on one side, its hands stopped at 10:10. A cloth chesterfield. A coffee table. A curio cabinet in the corner.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Grace said. “I can hear Harry grumbling and mumbling. Can’t you?”
With Grace, what would Harry have to grumble about?
“How much do they want?” I asked.
“Eighty-five. A hundred furnished. We need furnished.”
“You could swing it if …”
“He’ll make the team, Bish. Don’t worry.”
Grace took my hand and led me along a path to the drive. Our shoes make crunching sounds in the gravel. The garage door stood agape. We looked inside and smelled the oil and wood, the tang of gasoline. I pushed the door closed and fixed the latch. Out back, a massive Mulberry tree stood in the center of the lawn, its branches dotted with the first pale shoots of spring.
“Imagine the shade,” Grace said.
We stood beside a ragged bed of roses and imagined the summer heat and the shadows cast by the full leaves on the Mulberry’s summer branches.
Grace put her hand on my arm and said, “It’s not the money. It’s… Harry. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants …”
I knew what Harry wanted. He wanted what Spencer and Brown had last season. Nothing short of the World Series could satisfy a man like Cotton Purcell. I christened him on the pages of the Columbia Breeze and he took to the moniker, like his mother had whispered it to him while he was in the womb. Whether it fed his hunger or merely gave it a handle, I couldn’t tell.
I could feel the weight of my flask in my jacket pocket. If I wasn’t standing in a garden with Grace, I would’ve reached for it.
Grace said, “He’s been on six teams in the last five years. We went to Michigan. To Denver! Talk to him, Bish. Tell him it’s time to find a place to be.”
I promised I’d have a word with Harry when the team came back to town.
Grace smiled in my direction, but she seemed more disappointed by the bungalow with the Mulberry tree than she was by the mossy shack on Garron. She could imagine a life there on Temple Road with a carved mantelpiece over the fireplace and deep summer shade, but in her heart she knew Harry wouldn’t want this house or any house. All he wanted was an expanse of raked earth and mowed grass and stands towering around him. Who needs a roof when the roar of the crowd fills the sky over your head? Grace put her arm in mine, and we made our slow way back to the Maxwell.
There was no talking to Harry Purcell. We both knew that.
I had to talk Grace into stopping on Bellows street. “It’s on the way,” I said. “Can’t hurt.”
We passed the Fraser house. Grace peered from under her hat at the wisps of smoke that rose from the black husk of the place. Two chairs lay on the lawn beside the hat rack. A sign dangled from it. Keep Out.
I stopped in front of a white cottage with black shutters. A man with a cigarette in his lips pushed a mower across the lawn, his sleeved rolled to the elbow, his boater pushed back. I recognized the fellow. A clerk at the courthouse called Atterbury, who kept me apprised of the date and time of newsworthy trials.
I studied the clipping. “It says furnished,” I said. “Sixty-five dollars.”
Atterbury stopped mowing and wiped his brow. He flicked his smoke toward the gutter and smiled our way.
Grace waved, but she didn’t reach for the door handle.
“I know the man,” I said. “I’ll tell him he has a chance to rent his place to the Indians’ next center fielder. If he drops his price to fifty.”
“It looks cozy enough,” Grace said, which I interpreted as go ahead, see what you can do.
When I offered Atterbury my hand, his eyebrows rose in recognition.
“Afternoon, Bish.” He glanced past me at Grace in the car.
“What’s on the docket?” I said, for fun.
He pushed his lower lip out, shook his head. “Colored cases. Volstead violations. Nothing for you.”
I cast an appraising eye at the house. A coat of paint wouldn’t hurt. “Your place?” I asked.
He gave his mower a short push and pull. He shrugged. “Influenza took my father. The house came to me a couple years back.”
“Sixty-five a month seems high,” I said. A train whistle let out a wail right on cue. “For the neighborhood.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He nodded toward the car. “And the wife, Bish. But I just let my neighbors have it for fifty-five.” He took his hat off and pointed it toward the Fraser house. No more need be said. We shook hands again, and I suggested he come to Washington Park on Saturday.
“I’ll introduce you to the new slugger from the Central. Old pal of mine.”
Malcolm and Tina sat on a bench between the side door of the parlor and about a dozen cream cans stacked and arranged like bowling pins. The boy wore knickers and high lace boots and a gray sweater with a wide red stripe. He held his toy truck in his lap and spun the wheel with his finger.
Grace kissed Malcolm on his hair and brushed it back from his forehead. She took him by the hand and said, “Ice cream time. Leave the truck.” The boy hugged his toy to his chest. He turned to Tina. She nodded and put out her hand. Her smile was so warm and reassuring I would’ve handed over the key to my car, if she’d asked for it.
“I’ll hold onto it,” she said. “Enjoy your sundae, now, Malcolm.”
“What will you have, Tina?” I said.
She held the truck on the lap of her skirt with two hands. “Thank you, Mr. Bish. I’m partial to strawberry.”
Malcolm asked for strawberry ice cream, too. Grace and I both ordered sundaes. I asked the man for extra nuts for Grace. She and Malcolm sat a marble topped table while I went outside with Tina’s cup and a wooden spoon.
She set the toy on the bench beside her and took the ice cream from my hands. “Thank you, Mr. Bish,” she said. I didn’t expect her to smile at me like she smiled at Malcolm. She didn’t. But I didn’t expect to see a flash of pity cross her face. Her eyes went wide when she looked at me and then past me toward the window and the table where Grace and Malcolm sat. She bowed toward her ice cream and said, “Much obliged, Mr Bish.” When she looked up at me, she smiled, but that look was still in her eyes. I left her sitting alone on the bench by a pile of cream cans.
As I took my seat across from Grace and Malcolm, I noticed a man at the next table reading the sports page of the Star. His wife gave Grace’s belly a knowing look. We made a pretty picture, the three of us with our ice cream.
“Listen,” Grace said, and pointed her spoon toward the window. I looked that way in time to see Tina turn away. I could hear a tenor voice floating out of the music store next door.
“That song reminds me of Harry,” she said.
I listened because Grace asked me to listen. “Buddies through all of the gray days, buddies when something sent wrong.”
“His song?” I said.
“You don’t remember?” She smiled for the first time in about an hour. A sickle moon of a dimple appeared on her left cheek.
Harry and Henry Burr? No, I didn’t remember.
Grace wiped Malcolm’s face with her napkin. “Harry whistles. He hears a song once and he can whistle it clear through. I think he should go on the radio and whistle.”
After three more spoonfuls, the boy slid out of his chair and pointed outside. We watched him run out the door.
The lady at the next table took a cigarette from silver case and put it between her lips. Her man said, “Cincinnati’s coming to town on Saturday.” He struck a match on the underside of the table and laid the flame on the end of her smoke.
She threw her head back and blew a long plume toward the ceiling fan. She said, “A ballgame might be fun.”
“I’m dying for one of those,” Grace said.
The Grace of old would never be so unladylike as to smoke in public.
“Harry has me light his cigarettes while he drives. Next thing you know…” That slow downbeat of disappointment was in her voice again.
“He’s great,” I said. “He’s better than that whole team put together. Don’t worry.”
Grace wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked at the smudge of pink her lips left there. “Talk to him,” she said. “Please. He likes you, Bish.”
Grace wanted to walk home with Tina and Malcolm. While I sat in the Maxwell and watched the toy truck clatter along the sidewalk, I let myself imagine Grace looking over her shoulder at me. Her smile. Her lovely green eyes. She didn’t look back. Neither did Malcolm. Tina took the boy by the hand and drew him close. She looked back, squinting at me, head tilted, curious, as if she could almost recognize a man she used to know.