Magic Time

‘Don’t be hard on yourself,’ Dad said. ‘It could have been your wife. It could have been me driving home from the hardware store on a Saturday morning.’

There was no way Dad could have done more – I don’t know if I could be so generous in similar circumstances – but what he did wasn’t enough. Mr. Franklin had a nervous breakdown, lost his job as an accountant with the Grain Exchange. He stopped driving. His family left him. He stayed home alone and drank all day. On the first anniversary of my mother’s death Mr. Franklin put a gun to his head and ended his pain.

Dad had a married sister in Kansas City; my mother had one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee; and Grandma Palichuk lived only a ten-minute drive from us. Each of them volunteered to take Byron and me, to care for us and to raise us as their own.

And some good cases were made, the best by my dad’s sister in Kansas City, my Aunt Noreen, who was married to a lawyer, lived in a five-bedroom house with a swimming pool, had only one child, a girl, Phoebe, and was desperate for a son, but unable to bear any more children. No one considered for a moment that Dad might want to raise his own sons.

But my dad, big awkward rough diamond that he was, refused all their offers, even ignored Aunt Noreen, who, after being turned down, threatened to sue for custody on the grounds that Dad lacked the ability to care for us properly. It was about ten years before Dad forgave his sister for that threat. He intended to look after us himself, he said. And when Dad says something, he means it.

It wasn’t easy. There were housekeepers, play schools, and day-care centers. There were babysitters who did exactly that – sat – often having friends over who ate everything not locked up. There were housekeepers who drank, who entertained boyfriends, who quit on a moment’s notice, stealing whatever they were able to carry.

There were also some wonderful women who tried to be mothers to Byron and me, some hoping Dad would take a fancy to them if they were nice enough to us and kept the house spotless. Others simply loved children. One was a middle-aged lady named Mrs. Watts, a black woman whose family had a cottage on a lake some fifty miles out of Chicago. She took us to the lake for two weeks when I was eight and Byron was six. Dad came down on the weekends and slept in a hammock on the porch of the cabin, and we went fishing and boating and collected rocks and shells. But Mrs. Watts’ mother became ill and she had to go look after her instead of us.

It was Dad who enrolled me in Little League, where I immediately showed skill and power beyond my years.

‘Did you ever play ball?’ I asked him.

‘I used to play in a commercial league when I was a teenager. I played third base with all the grace of King Kong. The thing I did best was get hit by the pitcher. The ball didn’t hurt so much because I have big bones. I’d lean over the plate and dare the pitcher to hit me, and often enough he would.’

We muddled through. By the time 1 was in first grade I’d mastered the washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher. We went to school in clean if unironed clothes. I did the dishes as soon as I got home from school. Byron learned to cook, first out of necessity then for pleasure. I can see him standing on a chair in front of the stove, five years old, frying pork chops, boiling carrots that I had cut up, salting, peppering, shooing me away if I tried to help. We got our share of burns and scrapes and cuts, but we were truly scared only once. When I was six, I reached up and put my finger under the knife as Dad was slicing bread for Sunday morning toast. I still have the scar. There was blood everywhere, and Byron kept a washcloth pressed tightly about my finger as Dad hurried us to Emergency, the cloth turning raspberry colored in spite of the pressure Byron put on it.

‘How long will he be on the disabled list?’ Dad asked the doctor after he had stitched me up. ‘This boy’s the star of his Little League team and he’s only six.’ I was pale and still snuffling a little. My knees were like water, and I didn’t feel the least like a star baseball player.

The hand recovered, and I roared through every league I played in. Our high-school team won twenty-seven games in a row my freshman year and, though we lost in the first round of the Illinois State Championships, I was voted outstanding player.

Afterward, my coach told me a scout from the White Sox had been in the stands for a couple of games.

‘Didn’t want to put any pressure on you, Son, so I didn’t tell you. You’ve got a big-league future in front of you, or I don’t know my baseball players. You’ve got all the tools. Speed, a strong arm, and a good eye will make up for your lack of power. You’re gonna be a great one.’

Had he not told me about the scout because he knew I didn’t play well under pressure? Or hadn’t he noticed? I’d gone 0–5 in our tournament loss, and made an error.

TWO

I was in my second year of high school the day a Cadillac the color of thick, rich cream pulled up in front of Mrs. Grover’s Springtime Café and Ice Cream Parlor. Our main street was paved but narrow, with six feet of gravel between the edge of the pavement and the sidewalk. Dust from the gravel whooshed past the car and oozed through the screen door of the café.

Byron and I were seated at a glass-topped table, our feet hooked on the insect-legged chairs. We were sharing a dish of vanilla ice cream, savoring each bite, trying to make it outlast the heat of high July.

It was easy to tell the Cadillac owner was a man who cared about his car. He checked his rear view carefully before opening the driver’s door. After he got out – ‘unwound’ would be a better description, for he was six foot five if he was an inch – he closed the door gently but firmly, then wiped something off the side-view mirror with his thumb. On the way around the Caddy, he picked something off the grille and flicked it onto the road.

He took a seat in a corner of the café where he could watch his car and everyone else in the café which was me, Byron, and Mrs. Grover.

The stranger looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had rusty hair combed into a high pompadour that accentuated his tall front teeth and made his face look longer than it really was. Across his upper lip was a wide coppery-red mustache with the corners turned up and waxed, the kind worn by 1890s baseball players.

Though everything about him was expensive, down to the diamond ring on his left baby finger, he looked like the type who didn’t like to conform. I guessed he had grown his hair down past his shoulders when he was a teenager. His hair was now combed back, hiding the top half of his ears and the back of his collar. He was wearing a black suit with fine gray pinstripes, a white-on-white shirt, and shoes that must have cost three hundred dollars.

‘I’d like something tall and cool,’ he said.

‘I have pink lemonade,’ Mrs. Grover said in a tiny voice that belied her 250 pounds. She had waddled halfway from the counter to his table, but stopped when the stranger spoke.

‘I’ll have the largest one you’ve got,’ he said.

Mrs. Grover delivered the lemonade in a sweaty, opaque glass. He took a long drink, stretched his legs, and looked around the room.

‘What do you figure he does?’ whispered Byron.

When I didn’t answer quickly enough he went on. ‘A banker, I bet – or an undertaker, maybe.’

‘He’s suntanned,’ I said, ‘and bankers have short hair.’ The big brother pointing out the obvious to the little brother. ‘And look at his hands.’

The knuckles were scarred, the fingers callused.

‘What then?’

‘Howdy, boys,’ the stranger said, and raised his glass to us. His voice was deep and soft.

‘Hi,’ we said.

‘I see you’re ballplayers.’ He nodded toward our gloves, which rested on the floor by the chair legs. ‘Is there much baseball played in these parts?’

The question was like opening a floodgate. We told him about everything from Little League to the high-school team I played for, to the commercial leagues where the little towns, subdivisions, and bedroom communities competed, to the Cubs and White Sox in nearby Chicago.

1 ended the baseball lecture saying, ‘My brother doesn’t play much baseball, at least not the way I do. I’m gonna play pro some day.’

‘How did your team do this year?’ he asked me, not in the patronizing way most adults have, but speaking with a genuine interest.

‘Well,’ I said, a little embarrassed, ‘last year we went to the State Championships, but this season we were two and nineteen. But we’re really a lot better ball club than that,’ I rushed on before he could interrupt – or laugh, as most adults did when I announced our dismal record.

‘I keep statistics,’ I said. ‘We scored more runs than any team in the league. We’re good hitters and average fielders, but we didn’t have anyone who could pitch. A bad team gets beat seventeen to two. We’d get beat seventeen to fourteen, nineteen to twelve, eighteen to sixteen.’

‘They’re really good hitters, especially Mike here,’ Byron broke in. ‘Mike’s gonna make it to the Bigs.’

‘I practice three hours a day all year round,’ I said. ‘I’m a singles hitter. A second-base man. I walk a lot and steal a lot.’

‘If you’re good you’ll make it,’ the stranger said.

‘You look like you might be a player yourself,’ I said.

‘I’ve pitched a few innings in my day,’ he said, with what I recognized as understatement, and he made his way, in two long strides, to our table.

‘The thought struck me that you boys might like another dish of ice cream. Since you’re sharing I assume your budget is tight.’

‘You’ve had a good thought,’ said Byron.

‘I notice my lemonade cost seventy-five cents, as does a dish of ice cream. I might be willing to make a small wager.’

‘What kind?’ we both asked, staring up at him.

‘Well now, I’m willing to bet I can tell you the exact distance in miles between any two major American cities.’

‘How far is it from Algonquin to Peoria?’ Byron asked quickly.

‘Algonquin, at least, is not a major American city,’ said the stranger gently, ‘but I did notice as I was driving that the distance from DeKalb to Peoria was 118 miles, so you just add the distance from DeKalb to Algonquin.’ Byron looked disappointed.

‘What I had in mind, though, were large cities. Chicago, of course, would qualify, so would Des Moines, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, and, if you insist,’ and he smiled in a quick and disarming manner at Byron, ‘I’ll throw in Peoria.’

‘How far from New York to Chicago?’ I asked.

‘Exactly 809 miles,’ said the stranger.

‘How do we know you’re not making that up?’ I said.

‘A good question. Out in my car I have a road atlas, and inside it is a United States mileage chart. If one of you boys would like to get it …’

As he spoke he reached a large hand into a side pocket and withdrew his keys. I had grabbed them and was halfway across the room before Byron could untangle his feet from the chair legs.

The interior of the car was still cool from the air conditioning. It smelled of leather and of lime after-shave. There was nothing in sight except a State Farm road atlas on the front seat. The very neatness of the car told a lot about its owner, I thought: methodical, the type of man who would care about distances.

I carried the atlas into the café, where the stranger was now seated across the table from Byron.

‘Let’s just check out New York to Chicago,’ he said. ‘There’s always a chance I’m wrong.’

He turned to the United States mileage chart, and all three of us studied it. There were eighty cities listed down the side of the chart, and sixty names across the top. Where the two names intersected on the chart was the mileage between them.

‘Yes, sir, 809 miles, just as I said.’

The stranger put a big, square fingertip down on the chart at the point where New York and Chicago intersected.

I noticed the stranger had a lantern jaw. He was also more muscular than I would have guessed, his shoulders square as a robot’s. His eyes were golden.

I quickly calculated that there were nearly five thousand squares on the mileage chart. He can’t know them all, I thought.

‘Would either of you care to test me?’ he asked, as if reading my mind. He smiled. ‘By the way, my name’s Roger Cash.’

‘Mike Houle,’ I said. ‘And this is my kid brother, Byron.’

We were sharing the ice cream because we were saving for a Cubs’ home stand. Dad had promised to take us into the city every night as long as we could afford to buy our own tickets.

‘Well …’

‘No bets, then. Just name some places. Distances are my hobby.’

‘Omaha and New Orleans,’ I said.

‘Approximately 1,026,’ Roger Cash replied, after an appropriate pause.

We checked it, and he was right.

‘St. Louis to Los Angeles,’ said Byron.

‘Exactly 1,838 miles,’ said Roger.

Again he was right.

‘Milwaukee to Kansas City,’ I said.

‘One thousand, seven hundred and seventy-nine,’ he replied quickly.

We checked the chart.

‘Wrong!’ we chorused together. ‘It’s 1,797.’

‘Doggone,’ said Roger, grinning sheepishly, ‘sometimes I tend to reverse numbers. Seeing as how I couldn’t do it three times in a row, I’ll buy each of you men a dish of ice cream, or something larger if you want. A banana split? You choose.’

It wasn’t often we could afford top-of-the-line treats. I ordered a banana split with chopped almonds and chocolate sauce on all three scoops. Byron ordered a tall chocolate malt, thick as cement. Roger had another pink lemonade.

‘What made you memorize the mileage chart?’ I asked between mouthfuls of banana split.

‘Nothing made me,’ said Roger, leaning back and straightening out his legs. ‘I spend a lot of time traveling, a lot of nights alone in hotel and motel rooms. It passes the time, beats drinking or reading the Gideon Bible.

‘I’ve been known to gamble on my ability to remember mileages,’ he went on, ‘and on the outcome of baseball games in which I am the pitcher. I never gamble unless the odds are in my favor, substantially in my favor.’

‘Do you pitch for anyone in particular?’ I asked.

‘One season, I tried to take a team barnstorming. But,’ and he shook his head sadly, ‘that era is dead and gone. When I was a boy I watched the House of David play, and the Kansas City Monarchs. Must have been about the last season they toured. Costs too much to support a traveling team these days, and with television and all, people don’t go out to minor-league parks to see their home team let alone a team of barnstormers.

‘No, what I do now is arrange for a pickup team to back me up – play an exhibition game against a well-known local team … Say,’ he said, as if he had just been struck by a brilliant idea. ‘Do you suppose you men could round up the rest of your high-school team?’

‘Byron’s not in high school yet,’ I said. ‘But I probably could. Most of the players live close by, a few on farms. Some will be away on vacation, but I think I could round up a full team without too much trouble.’

‘In that case I think we might be able to arrange a business proposition.’

For the next few minutes, Roger Cash outlined his plans, while Byron and I nodded at his every suggestion. It was obvious he had done this thing many times before.

All the time he was talking, I was eyeing the mileage chart, searching for an easily reversible number.

‘Have you spotted one that will beat me?’ Roger asked suddenly. He had been talking about how many practices our team would need, and the switch in subject caught me by surprise.

‘Maybe.’

‘You want to put some money on it?’

‘A dollar.’ I gulped. I could feel the pace of my heart pick up.

‘You’re on,’ he said, turning away from where the chart lay open on the table top. ‘Name the cities.’

‘Albuquerque to New York.’

Roger laughed. ‘You picked one of the hardest. A mileage easy to reverse. Now, if I wanted to win your dollar I’d say 1,997.’ He paused for one beat. I could feel my heart bump, for the number was right.

‘But if I wanted to set you up to bet five dollars on the next combination, I’d say 1,979. I might miss the next one, too. People are greedy and like to take money from a stranger. I might even miss a third or fourth time, and I always leave the chart out where a man with a sharp eye can spot an easily reversible number. You men aren’t old enough to go to bars, or I’d show you how it really works.’

I took out my wallet, opened it up and lifted out a dollar. ‘No,’ said Roger. ‘I’ll chalk that one up to your experience. I have a mind for distances. I once read a story about a blind, retarded boy who played the piano like a master. And I heard about another man who can tell you what day of the week any date in history, or future history, was or will be. Myself, I have an idiot’s talent for distances.’

‘What’s so great about distances?’ asked Byron. ‘If I was smart I’d choose something else to be an expert on.’

‘Let me tell you about distances,’ said Roger, his golden eyes like coins with black shadows at the center. ‘Six or eight inches doesn’t make any difference, say, between Des Moines and Los Angeles, right?’

We nodded.

‘Now suppose you’re in bed with your girlfriend.’

Roger Cash moved forward, hunching over the table, lowering his voice, because over behind the counter Mrs. Grover was doing her best to hear our conversation. Nothing went on that Mrs. Grover didn’t know about. And if there was a shortage of happenings, Mrs. Grover was not above creating some rumors just to get things fermenting.

‘Suppose your peter won’t do what it’s supposed to – you men do know about such things?’

We both nodded eagerly. My experience was more limited than I was willing to admit; but Byron, who was fifteen months younger than me, had always liked girls and girls had always liked him. Though we seldom talked about our sexual adventures, I suspected Byron had more actual experience than I did.

‘If your peter won’t produce that six or eight inches,’ our faces were in a tight triangle over the table, and Roger was whispering, ‘no matter how close you are to pussy, you might as well be 1,709 miles away, which is how far it is from Des Moines to Los Angeles.’

Roger laughed, and we joined in, though more from nervousness than appreciation. At the lunch counter, one ear still tipped toward us, Mrs. Grover smiled crossly.

‘The distances in baseball are perfect,’ Roger went on, ‘ninety feet from base to base, sixty feet six inches from the mound to the plate. Not too far. Not too close. But change any one of them just six or eight inches, the length of your peter, and the whole game’s out of kilter.’

Byron and I nodded, wide-eyed.

‘Well, since you men say you can get me a team, all we have left to do is find ourselves an opponent,’ said Roger. ‘Who’s the best pitcher in these parts?’

‘That would be Silas Erb,’ I said. ‘Chucks for First National Bank in the Division One Commercial League.’

‘Is he crafty or a hardball thrower?’

‘Strictly a thrower. Ninety miles an hour straight down the middle, dares anybody to hit it.’

‘Scratch him. I want a guy who’s a curveballer, maybe tries to throw a screwball, has a wicked change.’

‘That would be McCracken,’ I said. ‘McCracken Construction have been Division One Champs two years in a row.’

‘And he owns the company?’

‘His father does.’

‘Would he be the kind to accept a challenge from an elderly pitcher with a two-and-nineteen high-school team on the field in back of him?’

‘Who wouldn’t? McCracken thinks he’s the sneakiest junkball-pitcher since Hoyt Wilhelm. He throws a knuckle curve.’

‘If we were to set up this game with McCracken, get posters printed, and talk up this challenge game, what sort of attendance do you think we could expect?’

‘People are hungry for good baseball,’ I said. ‘I think we could get five or six hundred fans out, maybe more, with people from the new subdivisions.’

‘Would they pay three dollars a head?’

‘No problem.’

Roger Cash grinned, the right side of his mouth opening up to show his dice-like teeth. I noticed then, even through the suit, that his right upper arm and shoulder were huge, many inches larger than his left.

* * *

THREE

What he proposed to McCracken that night was a winner-take-all game, my high-school team with Roger Cash pitching, against McCracken Construction, Division One Champs and one of the best commercial-league baseball teams in the state.

‘I said to him,’ Roger told us later, ‘“I’ll be happy to cover any wagers you, your teammates, or the good citizens of this area might like to make, all in strictest confidence, of course!”

‘“At what odds?” McCracken wanted to know.’

Byron and I had waited in the cool interior of the Cadillac, outside McCracken’s sprawling ranch-style home, while Roger had done his bargaining and arranging.

‘“Even odds,” I said. “Roger Cash is not greedy.” And you should have seen him smile.

‘“I’d like to see you work out,” McCracken said to me.

‘“Oh no,” I said. “The element of surprise is all I’ve got on my side. I hear tell you played in Triple A for a year, so you’re not likely to be surprised by anything an old amateur like me can throw. Myself, I played a dozen games one summer for a Class C team in Greensboro, North Carolina; but they didn’t pay me enough to keep my mustache waxed so I moved on. Actually they suggested I move on, but that’s another story.” I smiled real friendly at him, and he didn’t give me any argument.’

Back in front of the Springtime Café and Ice Cream Parlor, after the game was set, Roger led us around to the trunk of the Caddy. Byron and I were on our tiptoes trying to stare over and around him. The trunk was almost as austere as the car interior.

It contained a black valise, very old, almost triangular, with heavy brass latches, and a canvas duffel bag with a pair of worn black baseball cleats tied around its drawstring.

A few garden tools were cast diagonally across the trunk: a rake, a hoe, a small spoon-nosed shovel, all spotless. Built into the depression where the spare wheel would ordinarily have been was a small, black safe, anchored in concrete.

‘We’re going to need some money to finance this operation,’ Roger said, and smiled slowly, lines appearing in the deeply tanned skin around his eyes. ‘I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to turn your backs while I operate on Black Betsy here. I’d be obliged if you kept the secret of her existence among the three of us.’

Though it wasn’t worded as one, Byron and I both recognized that the final statement was a command. We stared up and down the street and studied the windows of the Springtime Café while Roger turned the dial on the safe. It made little buzzy sounds like a bicycle lock.

‘You can turn around now,’ he said finally.

The safe was stuffed with money; from what I could see, mostly hundreds.

The deal Roger proposed was that each of the eight players to back him up was to receive twenty dollars for the game. Byron and I were to be paid extra for distributing posters to the downtown area, and over a thousand handbills to homes in nearby bedroom communities, and on car windshields.

And we were to be paid for selling tickets right up until game time. Roger also suggested that we arrange to sell hot dogs, soda, and popcorn, since I’d told him no one ever bothered to do that at the local baseball grounds.