Graves' Retreat

Graves' Retreat Read Online Free PDF

Book: Graves' Retreat Read Online Free PDF
Author: Ed Gorman
next pitch was also a strike.
        This time the adults joined the kids in hollering Les’ name.
        Les smacked the ball into his glove several times before letting the next one go. His memories of the Chicago training camp were beginning to fade. He was older, he reasoned, and more experienced and what he’d done there, he would not repeat here.
        As if to make his self-confidence conclusive, the ball sailed across the plate with speed so blinding that all the batter could do was jump back from the white flash so that he would not be injured.
        The crowd roared.
        Overwhelmed by the moment, Les looked in the direction of the little boys and waved his glove at them.
        Yes, by God, he was going to take Sterling on and he was going to beat Sterling.
        The rest of the game went quickly. Batters up, batters down. Five more strikeouts before it was all over.
        Les joined his teammates in pouring beers from tin buckets brought from a nearby tavern.
        The players sat on the grass, impending blue dusk splashed beautifully across the sky, and listened to Harding, the manager, talk as he paced up and down the length of them, beer foam on his upper lip.
        “I don’t have to tell you what the Sterling team has always said about us, do I?”
        Everybody agreed that nobody here need be reminded of the various insults, both explicit and implicit, that Sterling had made about Cedar Rapids.
        A hick town with hick players.
        Overgrown schoolboys.
        Not worth bothering with.
        “And those are the things I want you to keep in mind as we get ready over the next six days,” Harding said, walking back and forth. “They’re going to come here on a fancy train car and they’re going to make a big proposition out of the fact that one of their pitchers may be bought next year by the Cleveland Spiders and that two of their outfielders played for the Buffalo Bisons. And you know what?”
        “What?” came a ragged chorus.
        “We’re not going to be impressed, that’s what. And you know why?”
        “Why?” came a fuller chorus.
        “Because we’re a better team. And there are some very good reasons for that.” He paused to take a big swig of beer which seemed to bloat his already beered belly even as the men looked at him. “One, we hustle more. Two, we’ve got something to prove. Three, each and every one of us does his job. And four-” He splashed his mug in the direction of Les. “And four, we’ve got Les Graves!”
        And then they were all waving their beers in Les’s direction and yelling and hollering and screaming and acting exactly the way they gave their kids hell for acting.
        Like goofuses.
        Like crackerheads.
        Like loons.
        And having themselves a great time of it.
        
***
        
        Thirty minutes later, pleasantly drunk, the men began to drift away to their homes.
        Harding came up to Les and said, “Talk to you a minute?”
        “Sure.”
        “Why don’t we walk the bases. Nobody else needs to hear this.”
        "Fine.”
        So they walked the bases and smelled flowers and watched the moon come up and heard mothers calling children in from the night.
        Harding said, “I’m just a fireman.”
        “Well, that’s all right. I’m just a bank clerk.”
        “And Cedar Rapids ain’t no goddamn Sterling and I’ll be the first to admit it. We haven’t got steam-driven trolley cars yet and we don’t have telephones in a fourth of the homes.”
        Les was just drunk enough that he wondered if he was hearing Harding right. “You ashamed of us?”
        Right there at second base Harding stopped and said (shouted really), "Hell, no, I ain’t ashamed of us. I’m second-generation Cedar Rapids and damn proud of it.”
        "Then why-”
        “Because that’s what a lot of
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Place in the City

Howard Fast

Ruth

Elizabeth Gaskell

A Twist of Fate

Christa Simpson

The Iron King

Julie Kagawa

Twilight of a Queen

Susan Carroll

Remember the Time

Annette Reynolds

The Night Monster

James Swain