Brittle Innings Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hellbenders, has need of him.”
    “So do the Red Stix. Plus, Danny’s got school to finish.”
    “Yessum,” Mister JayMac said.
    “He’s been going twelve years, nearly,” Mama said. “Why fall shy of a sheepskin by a piddlin two months?”
    “Why, indeed? An enlightened attitude,” Mister JayMac said.
    “He needs his education.”
    “ ‘What sculpture is to a block of marble,’ ” Mister JayMac told Mama,     “ ‘education is to the soul.’ Addison.”
    “Well, Addison spoke true.”
    “Yes he did,” Mister JayMac said. “But there’s education and there’s education. If Danny doesn’t return to Highbridge with me tomorrow, he’ll miss the chance to train with us and the opening month of our season.” He pulled a string-tied packet from inside his coat. “Here’s a contract, Mrs. Boles.” He untied the packet and handed an official-looking form with a clip-on to Mama. “Also a check for seventy-five dollars, his first full month’s pay.” He could’ve dropped a garter snake down my shirt—that kind of thrill went through me. “But, Mrs. Boles, you must countersign my enabling form and let Danny go back with me.” He reached over and tapped the check.
    I was a slave who wanted to be sold. School was lectures and yawns, girls smirking and wiseacres pulling stupid jokes.
    Mama stared down at my clipped-on check. “Coach Brandon says some nigger ballplayers make twice this, maybe.”
    “That’s probably true,” Mister JayMac said. “I daresay those players draw better than Danny’s likely to jes yet.”
    “Well, he can’t go now anyway,” Mama said. “Even when he can, seventy-five won’t do. That’s coffee-and-cake pay. Danny may jes be starting, but no colored boy ought to make more than him.”
    My mama, the John L. Lewis of ball agents. All she needed was Lewis’s eyebrows. Mister JayMac ripped up his check, and I almost swallowed my tongue. Smithereened. My whole career.
    “Mrs. Boles, you drive a hard bargain.” Mister JayMac took the contract back. “I’ll up his pay twenty-five and send yall a new contract. Forget this one. Mr. Boles,” finally looking at me, “we’ll send you a train ticket. Ride down soon as you’ve got your diploma, hear?”
    I tried to answer. “Yessir,” I wanted to say, but it might as well’ve been the Lord’s Prayer in Gullah.
    As promised, the revised contract came two weeks later. Mama and I signed it for a notary, with Coach Brandon and the Elshtains as witnesses. Two, three days later, Mr. Ogrodnik announced my good fortune to the student body in the gym. Kids cheered, pretty girls and class-officer types among them. If I’d had the guts, I would have raspberried half the hypocrites there, even though I did like hearing them cheer.
    Franklin Gooch said I was a lucky bastard. When we’d won the war, guys like DiMaggio, Williams, and Greenberg would come home and their stay-at-home subs would disappear completely. A real talent, though, would survive.
    “You,” Goochie said, “are a real talent.”
    Goochie was already eighteen. Early in ’42, his mama’s younger brother had been killed on the cruiser Houston in the Battle of the Java Sea. Goochie wanted to take a few Jap scalps in the Marines, but he didn’t begrudge me my shot at a career in pro ball. Envied me, but didn’t call me a feather merchant. He had other kettles of fish to fry. Too bad his goals led him into the hands of a graves-registration crew on Okinawa.

3

    B ecause Tenkiller was a side-track burg, I caught the train in Tahlequah. Mister JayMac had sent me a ticket.
    Colonel Elshtain had a C gas-rationing sticker on the divided window of his automobile, supposedly because his job at Deck Glider had such import to the national defense. Actually, I think, he had buddies in the War Department, who knew folks in the Office of Price Administration. Anyway, that C sticker got Colonel Elshtain all the gas he wanted, and he and Miss Tulipa drove Mama and me to