he thought I was a bum. On an impulse I counted the money in my pocket. Eighty-two cents.
I suppose that qualified me.
The blocks seemed interminable in the heavy heat. Before the robbery I’d enjoyed a buoyant confidence that I was being drawn back, mysteriously but inexorably, to Cait. Now that confidence had been badly undercut, and I didn’t know what to think.
Don’t think at all
, I tried to tell myself.
Just do the next thing
.
Finally the buildings thinned, and I came to a parklike square set among cultivated fields and multi-storied mansions. Visible above a high fence was a spacious grandstand bordered by flowering trees. Everything locked tight. No Sunday ball. No watchman, either. It looked like I’d have to wait till tomorrow to find Croft. I peered through the fence at manicured grass and smooth basepaths. Why had Sweasy complained?
A sign at the entrance gate provided the answer.
GRAND AVENUE GROUNDS
HOME OF THE BROWN STOCKINGS
I’d come to the wrong ballpark.
From a passing omnibus driver I learned that the Reds’ facility lay several miles the opposite way on Grand. I asked if I could ride free, but he said it would cost him his job. Unwilling to spend any of my precious coins, I set off again.
My feet were beginning to blister by the time I arrived. Hearing boys playing on the diamond, I stepped through broken slats in the fence and pulled off my brogans in a little patch of shade beside the bleachers. No covered stand here. Everything was fashioned more cheaply than at the Browns’ park. The neighborhood was vastly different, too: storage yards of the Missouri Pacific stretched for blocks around, and passing locomotives made the ground tremble.
While I massaged my feet and wondered if any of the boys knew how to find Croft, an old woman laboriously pushedthrough a gap in the gate. She was stooped and moved as if every step hurt. Her clothes were worse than mine. Bending occasionally, she stuffed bits of paper into a burlap bag. As she neared the bleachers, unaware of me, I saw that her hands were palsied. The boys began yelling insults and one threw a rock at her.
“Hey!” I must have looked like a monster rising from the shadow of the bleachers. The boys scattered like birds and vanished through the fence. The old woman looked mortally frightened. “I won’t hurt you,” I told her.
She kept an eye cocked on me as she resumed her scavenging, cackling once as she deposited a wadded-up newspaper in her bag.
“What do you do with the paper?” I asked.
“What yer think?” she said tartly. “Sell it.”
“How much you get?”
“Fi’teen cents.” She cocked her head as if challenging me to find fault. “Every five pounds.”
A recycling program straight out of Dickens.
“I’m special for rags,” she said. “Got to wash ’em, but the rate’s good. Five cents a pound-weight for cotton, six for soft woolen.” She rattled it off with an expert’s flair.
“Tell you what.” I put a penny on a bleacher plank. “If that’s today’s paper, I’ll buy it from you.”
She set it down, snatched the coin, triumphantly crowed, “Yestiddy’s,” and headed off the field.
As Croft had figured, the sporting page was devoted almost totally to the Browns’ shutout of Chicago. The Reds’ road victory got three terse sentences at the bottom. I found what I wanted, SCHEDULE OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES FOR MAY, and ran my finger down the column. Boston was scheduled at Hartford on the 18th. Eight days fromtoday. Spurred by the awareness that Twain now lived in a magnificent new house in Hartford, a plan began to form in my brain.
I dozed through the afternoon heat, then set out along the Missouri Pacific tracks, my brogans crunching on the gravel bed. A plume of smoke appeared ahead, followed by the warning jangle of a locomotive’s bell. I climbed the embankment and watched it thunder past, a huge historical toy come to life: cowcatcher and wheels bright
I suppose that qualified me.
The blocks seemed interminable in the heavy heat. Before the robbery I’d enjoyed a buoyant confidence that I was being drawn back, mysteriously but inexorably, to Cait. Now that confidence had been badly undercut, and I didn’t know what to think.
Don’t think at all
, I tried to tell myself.
Just do the next thing
.
Finally the buildings thinned, and I came to a parklike square set among cultivated fields and multi-storied mansions. Visible above a high fence was a spacious grandstand bordered by flowering trees. Everything locked tight. No Sunday ball. No watchman, either. It looked like I’d have to wait till tomorrow to find Croft. I peered through the fence at manicured grass and smooth basepaths. Why had Sweasy complained?
A sign at the entrance gate provided the answer.
GRAND AVENUE GROUNDS
HOME OF THE BROWN STOCKINGS
I’d come to the wrong ballpark.
From a passing omnibus driver I learned that the Reds’ facility lay several miles the opposite way on Grand. I asked if I could ride free, but he said it would cost him his job. Unwilling to spend any of my precious coins, I set off again.
My feet were beginning to blister by the time I arrived. Hearing boys playing on the diamond, I stepped through broken slats in the fence and pulled off my brogans in a little patch of shade beside the bleachers. No covered stand here. Everything was fashioned more cheaply than at the Browns’ park. The neighborhood was vastly different, too: storage yards of the Missouri Pacific stretched for blocks around, and passing locomotives made the ground tremble.
While I massaged my feet and wondered if any of the boys knew how to find Croft, an old woman laboriously pushedthrough a gap in the gate. She was stooped and moved as if every step hurt. Her clothes were worse than mine. Bending occasionally, she stuffed bits of paper into a burlap bag. As she neared the bleachers, unaware of me, I saw that her hands were palsied. The boys began yelling insults and one threw a rock at her.
“Hey!” I must have looked like a monster rising from the shadow of the bleachers. The boys scattered like birds and vanished through the fence. The old woman looked mortally frightened. “I won’t hurt you,” I told her.
She kept an eye cocked on me as she resumed her scavenging, cackling once as she deposited a wadded-up newspaper in her bag.
“What do you do with the paper?” I asked.
“What yer think?” she said tartly. “Sell it.”
“How much you get?”
“Fi’teen cents.” She cocked her head as if challenging me to find fault. “Every five pounds.”
A recycling program straight out of Dickens.
“I’m special for rags,” she said. “Got to wash ’em, but the rate’s good. Five cents a pound-weight for cotton, six for soft woolen.” She rattled it off with an expert’s flair.
“Tell you what.” I put a penny on a bleacher plank. “If that’s today’s paper, I’ll buy it from you.”
She set it down, snatched the coin, triumphantly crowed, “Yestiddy’s,” and headed off the field.
As Croft had figured, the sporting page was devoted almost totally to the Browns’ shutout of Chicago. The Reds’ road victory got three terse sentences at the bottom. I found what I wanted, SCHEDULE OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES FOR MAY, and ran my finger down the column. Boston was scheduled at Hartford on the 18th. Eight days fromtoday. Spurred by the awareness that Twain now lived in a magnificent new house in Hartford, a plan began to form in my brain.
I dozed through the afternoon heat, then set out along the Missouri Pacific tracks, my brogans crunching on the gravel bed. A plume of smoke appeared ahead, followed by the warning jangle of a locomotive’s bell. I climbed the embankment and watched it thunder past, a huge historical toy come to life: cowcatcher and wheels bright
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