Читать книгу Always October - C. E. Edmonson - Страница 7

That night, Eddie, Dad, and I shared a big bed that had four thick pillows, snow-white sheets, and a down comforter. The comforter was light as air and soft enough to be a cocoon. Though exhausted, Eddie and I remained awake for a long time, recounting the sights we’d seen, including two Chicago policemen arresting a man on State Street. When the man had resisted, they’d clubbed him to the ground. Momma had rushed us past the scene, giving us no opportunity to determine what the man had done. That didn’t prevent us from speculating. Eddie, if I recall, insisted the man was a cold-blooded murderer.

“Did you see that scar on his face?”

I hadn’t noticed any scar, but I was certain he was a bank robber because he carried a bulging paper bag. Bulging, naturally, with the loot.

“Good night, boys,” my dad finally whispered. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

* * *

The next morning, Annie and Momma left for their shopping expedition after breakfast. Eddie, Dad, and I wandered about the city for a time, with me and Eddie naturally becoming more restless as time passed, until we finally headed off to Weeghman Park—which later changed its name to Wrigley Field. We traveled aboard a bewildering array of trolley cars, switching routes three times—a system Dad navigated with seeming ease. Eddie and I kept our faces pressed to the windows. According to my father, the tallest buildings were called skyscrapers, a name that seemed right to me and Eddie. We argued over which was the tallest, trying to count the stories before the trolley passed. The furthest we got, if I remember correctly, was twenty-three.

Before long, the skyscrapers gave way to three- and four-story buildings, apartment buildings my dad explained. I had a tough time with the concept. Except for a few railroad workers who boarded near the train station, folks in Bear County lived in their own homes.

“Why don’t they live in houses?”

“They don’t have enough money.”

“Are they poor?”

“Average, more like. Why?”

“Seems pretty crowded to me.”

Somehow, when I was a youngster, I had a way of making my dad laugh without myself getting the joke. He laughed then, before patting my knee. “Crowds? Son, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

We didn’t get much farther before I noticed a pattern. Whereas the traffic along the streets had been pretty much divided between those coming at us and those going with us, now almost all the cars were headed the same way. That went double for the pedestrians. The sidewalks, too, were becoming more and more crowded as though we all—cars, passengers, and pedestrians—were scraps of iron drawn to Pete Wegner’s horseshoe magnet. When we came within view of the ball field I forgot all about the traffic.

“My, oh my,” Eddie said. “Ain’t she grand, Lucas? Ain’t she the grandest thing you’ve ever seen?”

To my little mind, she was all that and more. To my mind, Weeghman Park was pure magic. Twenty-five years later, when I returned to Wrigley Field, I found the stadium to be rather homely. There was nothing in its architecture to indicate more than the builder’s determination to minimize the cost of construction. But on that day, my jaw dropped open at the sight and my little heart soared. We might have been approaching the gates of heaven instead of the main gate of a baseball park.

“This is us.” Dad rose and offered his hands, one to me and one to Eddie. “Hold tight, boys. You don’t want to get lost in this crowd.”

No, I surely didn’t. There were so many people, a river of people, all crowded together, bumping into each other without an “excuse me,” everyone talking, laughing. To the right and left of the gate, carts sold pennants, caps, scorecards, satin jackets, and baseballs, some of them signed by every member of the team. My father guided us to the cart on the left. No fool, he didn’t ask us what we wanted, just settled a pair of genuine Cubs baseball caps on our heads, paid the man behind the cart, and herded us to the gate.

I was so proud at that moment, I wanted to bust, and I could sense Dad’s pride as well. He’d done this, given us this moment, hoping I’d remember it until I closed my eyes for the last time. In that he succeeded. These days, when I get up in the morning, it’s all I can do to remember where I left my eyeglasses. But I remember every minute of that game.

We joined the ticketholders’ line and shuffled forward until Dad handed our tickets to a man who tore them in half. The man gave the bottom halves back to Dad and said, “Enjoy the game, boys.”

Then we were through the gate, walking up a long, concrete ramp. The ramp was deeply shadowed, a tunnel leading from the sunshine outside the stadium to the sunshine within. When we finally came into the light, Dad squatted down, took me and Eddie by the waists, and lifted us high enough in the air to allow an unimpeded view of the ball field. The June grass was the greenest of greens, the red-dirt baselines impossibly straight, the bases as white as new-fallen snow. The foul lines ran, to the left and right, from home plate to heaven. For once, even Eddie was struck dumb.

The Cubs were on the field, outfielders and infielders. They seemed awfully small compared to the acres of grass around them. Could nine men cover all that ground? Could any man hit a baseball over that wall?

“We’re holding up the wheels of progress,” Dad announced, setting us down. “Let’s find our seats.”

Our seats were behind third base, about ten rows back—expensive seats even in 1917, but I didn’t give a thought to the cost of the tickets. This place, Weeghman Park, was the realm of gods. Except, perhaps, for the man with a big belly who stood in front of home plate, bat in hand.

“Is that a player?” Eddie asked, pointing to the man.

“He’s a coach,” my father explained. “He’s conducting infield practice.”

I watched the unnamed coach toss a ball into the air and hit it, one handed, toward the third baseman—hit it harder than any ball I’d ever fielded. Unfazed, the fielder took a step to his right, graceful as a deer. Despite a bad hop, he scooped the ball up and threw it across the field to the waiting first baseman. The first baseman caught the ball and flipped it toward the visitors’ dugout all in one motion. He didn’t have much choice because the coach hit a second ball toward the shortstop before his first grounder reached the third baseman. By the time the first baseman got rid of one ball, another was coming at him.

I watched every move, my attention riveted, mentally comparing the players’ skills with those of the Bear County Bruins. My hometown, I have to admit, wasn’t faring too well, but all comparisons ceased when the Cubs began to practice double plays. I watched the coach hit a hard, one-hop grounder to the shortstop, who tossed the ball to the second baseman just as he crossed the bag. The second baseman caught the ball, whirled, and threw to first, the ball a blur that disappeared into the first baseman’s glove, seeming to leave a white line of vapor in its place.

I recall looking into Eddie’s eyes and neither of us finding words to match our feelings. We’d crossed a line marking the boundary between excitement and awe. The crowd was settling in around us, filling in the empty seats. The sum of their conversations filled the air, relentless as a gathering of bees. A vendor appeared in the aisle near our seats: “Program, program, get your program.” Others sold ginger beer and popcorn and boiled peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Buried somewhere inside the park, an organist played popular tunes through the stadium’s public-address system.

The Cubs ran off the field a few minutes later only to run back on a few minutes after that. They didn’t sing the national anthem back in 1917. The umpire shouted, “Batter up,” and the first St. Louis Cardinals batter stepped up to the plate. As he settled into his stance, the stadium announcer introduced him: “Now batting, Dots Miller.” And off we went.

Dots Miller grounded out to third, and the following batter struck out. Then Rogers Hornsby, the St. Louis shortstop, took his stance in the batter’s box. Hornsby went on to make the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but he was still young back then, young and out to prove himself. He did exactly that by driving Hippo Vaughn’s second pitch over the wall in left-center field. I watched the ball rise and rise, watched it soar into the sky, recorded every inch of its arc almost from the time it left the bat. Yet I still couldn’t convince myself a baseball could be hit that far. From behind, I heard a man say, his voice filled with regret, “That ball traveled four hundred feet if it traveled a foot.”

Amazed though I was, the crowd’s reaction—a collective groan that flowed from every throat—wasn’t lost on me. The Cardinals had scored first, and we were losing.

From that moment on, I became part of a whole. The stadium was full, almost every seat taken, but there might have been only one person in the stands—one person with thousands of bodies, thousands of throats, cheering, groaning, following every pitch as attentively as the players themselves. Hippo Vaughn settled down after that first-inning mistake. He held the Cardinals scoreless through the next six innings. Unfortunately the Cardinals’ pitcher, Red Ames, matched him inning for inning until the bottom of the seventh. That was when the Cubs’ leadoff batter, Larry Doyle, smacked a line drive that got between the outfielders and rolled to the wall. By the time the St. Louis right fielder ran the ball down and returned it to the infield, Doyle was on third base.

The next batter struck out, bringing the Cubs’ right fielder, Max Flack, to the plate. Flack swung and missed the first pitch, took a second pitch for ball one, then pulled off what was—to me and Eddie, anyway—a miracle that put the work of the prophets to shame. He bunted.

The Cardinals’ third baseman fielded the bunt and threw home. Too late. Doyle slid in ahead of the tag. That should have been the end of it, with Flack on first and the game tied. But Max Flack didn’t stop at first base. He kept on running. The St. Louis catcher was too busy arguing the umpire’s call to notice at first. When he finally did, he uncorked a hurried throw that hit Flack and bounded toward first base. And Max? He just kept running.

The throw to third was close, but Flack beat the ball. And, of course, he just kept running. He was fast alright, faster than anyone I’d ever seen, but this time the ball arrived well ahead of him. I could see it in the catcher’s glove when he stepped forward to block home plate, and I just assumed Flack would be tagged out. Max Flack, however, made no such assumption. No, sir. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the catcher without slowing down a whit. Dust flying, the two of them went head over heels, forcing the umpire to jump out of the way. Then the ball dribbled out of the catcher’s glove, and the crowd, including yours truly, went crazy.

Everything came together in that moment. The trains, the big city, the crowds on the streets and the crowds in the stands, even the bright, June sky and the cotton-white clouds overhead. Never in my young life had I dreamed such a wondrous thing was possible. And I tell you this, tell you from the bottom of my heart: in my mind, despite many decades since my first trip to Chicago, Max Flack is still running.