Sure, I know all the stats and juicy news about Big League baseball. Like, who else follows the Class A Colorado Springs Sky Sox, since they’re an affiliate of the White Sox? Nobody but me. Yeah, so, knowing baseball and playing it? Two different kettles of fish.
In centerfield, which is the Mick’s position, I’m not what you call hot, but I’m not a total wimp, either. Every so often I get under a fly, and I’ve got a decent arm to toss to Second and Third. Once I even hurled the ball to the catcher and threw a guy out at Home. But Coach Earlywine likes that thonk-crack sound when the bat slams the ball. Whenever I come up to bat, the sound you hear is the whoosh of my swing-and-a-miss.
Connor doesn’t say much to me at practice, while Coach is driving us into the ground like our spiked cleats. When Coach calls five minutes for water (“just to restore your electrolytes, not to give you pansies a breather”), Connor hangs out with the first baseman, Larry Jukes.
Walking home, Connor and I are stretching for neutral topics.
He says, “You hear that Luke Everly’s back from Korea?”
“No kidding? Must’ve snuck in when nobody was looking.”
“Except the G-men.”
Whoa, that’s not safe territory. Though it’s true. Most of the time they sit there spooking everybody who comes to Amy Lynn’s or my door. They scribble down license plates and notes about Mrs. Blaire’s weekly deliveries, when the only thing red about her stuff is the juice dripping from the raspberries that grow wild on her farm. Other times, they wait to pounce like blood-sucking vampires. This morning I caught one holding a milk bottle up to the sun, like maybe the milkman passes us pinko commie propaganda directly from the cows.
It’s like those guys live for the time the Sonfelters and Rafners start overthrowing the U.S. government. Like they’re actually disappointed at the end of each day when the White House is still standing, and Ike can say with a big yawn, “Nothing happened today, Mamie, girl. Let’s hit the sack.”
I shift my sweaty glove from one underarm to the other, trying to think of something to break the weird silence. Man, in a minute I’ll be whistling something from the Hit Parade. In the good old days, we could spend all day, all summer, talking baseball cards and comparing stats on our favorite players.
Between little bursts of strained conversation, I remember a night last summer at his house. His father and mother were upstairs watching The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, and Connor and I were bellied out on the rumpus room floor. On the radio, Tommy Edwards warbled a sappy love song: Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game . . .
“Yeah, same with baseball,” Connor said.
We spread our Fleer baseball cards out in front of us. Each package promised “Funnies, fortunes, facts on every wrapper,” plus ten cards and a thin sheet of pink Dubble Bubble you’d snap off in jagged pieces.
I asked, “Get anybody good?”
“Stan Musial, but I already had him. You?”
“Nah, same old stuff. Only Yankee is Phil Rizzuto, but at least he was MVP in ’51.”
Connor said, “Batting .320 in the Series against the Giants? They wouldn’t dare pick anybody else.”
“Oh yeah? What about Ted Williams in ’41? He was hitting .406, and Joltin’ Joe beat him out for MVP anyway.”
“Joe DiMaggio, that guy had it over every guy, every game.”
I thumbed through my cards, feeling that familiar ping when I didn’t get a Mantle. A package of Fleers without the Mick was like a PB&J without the peanut butter. Sweet, but nothing to sink your teeth into.
“Another dime down the drain,” we said together, like we always did when a new pack of Fleers was old news.
Conner snaps me back to the present. “Heard Luke’s pretty shot up, gimpy and kind of wacked out in the head.”
“Seriously?” What if he can’t stand up on his own two feet, or he doesn’t recognize any of us? More than a year since he left. He’s never even met his daughter, who’s almost walking. She could be walking better than he is. I wonder if he’ll be able to shoot baskets, or fix everybody’s busted appliances, or cut keys, or any of the stuff he’s always been good at. “Think he feels like a hero?”
“Sure should.” End of conversation.
On our way to Oxbow Road, we pass through the shopping street for the College. It’s called Hollyhock Hill, though it’s as flat as western Kansas. It got that senseless name fifty years ago, when they built the clock tower on campus. I hear that when you’re standing at the top of Whittier Tower and looking down over Palmetto, the Hill sort of pops up a foot higher than most of the town. I’ve got to check that out for myself someday.
The Hill is swarming with Hawthorne students—guys in pressed slacks and girls in big swishy skirts, their books clutched to their chests like somebody’s out to steal them.
“War of the Worlds” is playing at the Rialto, billed as “The mighty combination of entertainment and electronics that makes motion picture history.”
Connor reads the marquee in his best Walter Cronkite voice: “ ‘From limitless space . . . they’re reaching for YOU!’ ” He starts to grab my arm, then pulls his hand back. We keep walking.
Big relief to finally reach our corner and the familiar rows of two-story College houses, each with its own square of new spring grass and a double-garage door painted the same pukey pastel color as the house. One block to the east, and one block to the west, the houses look just like ours, which is comforting because lately I’m glad to find any evidence of normal life.
Whoa. Connor’s house has a huge American flag dipping toward the cement, long enough to mop the driveway and so new that you can still see the fold creases. “You trying to impress the feds, Connor?”
“Old Glory,” he says with a laugh.
Amy Lynn comes up behind us. “Urgent business. I’m spitting mad!” She’s clearly hoping her poison look will convince Connor to peel off, but he doesn’t.
“The girl’s seeing red,” he says. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Amy Lynn takes the bait. “I might as well be a bull with a matador waving the red cape in front of my eyes. I am so mad I could gore somebody.”
I jump aside. “Olé.”
Connor acts bored.
“It’s about what they’re doing to my father.”
I don’t want to hear more. I’m still stuffed from Dad’s last lectures. And I don’t want Connor to hear it, but she’s Amy Lynn, and hey, aren’t we all seeing red? “Yeah, fire away.”
“I found out why they’re after him.”
Now Connor’s interested. “Yeah? Why?”
Amy Lynn yanks up her white bobby sox. “Because McCarthy has this nutty notion that any veteran of the Spanish Civil War is a communist. Ever heard of anything so preposterous?”
“I’ve never even heard of the Spanish Civil War. Have you, Connor?”
“Nope.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a grade behind me.”
That stings, but I listen.
“Truthfully,” Amy Lynn whispers to me, so Connor can’t pick it up on his radar, “I just heard of it this morning.” Then louder, “It’s about the Spanish Republicans against the fascists, back in the thirties.”
“Where?” Connor asks.
“You wormbrain. Wouldn’t it be dumb to have the Spanish Civil War in, say, Antarctica?”
It would be dumb to have anything except penguins and frostbite in Antarctica, I’m thinking, but also that I’d better keep my mouth shut before I look like a cretin.
“ . . . So lots of soldiers from around the world went to Spain to fight with the loyalists. On the side of freedom, of course. The right side, which was kind of the left, I mean if you look at it politically.”
“Yeah, the commies,” says Connor.
Amy Lynn has her back to Connor, and she rushes through a lot of other stuff, which I translate into something I’m savvy to. It’s the bottom of the ninth, Spanish Republicans in the outfield, fascists up at bat. Bases are loaded when some bullfighter of a guy winds up for a spitball pitch right over the plate, and bam! Fascists strike out! Game’s over. Fans go wild. Olé!
“My father was one of them, part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of American soldiers.”
“Figures,” Connor mutters.
But I’m wowed. Dr. Sonfelter? The drippy guy with the horn-rimmed glasses and the slide rule sticking out of his pocket? Charging at the bad guys! And now the College is canning this war hero?
“You’re just as shocked as I am, Marty. So, McCarthy’s saying that all the Abraham Lincoln Brigade men were communists just because they fought the fascists. They weren’t, though, they were freedom fighters. The whole thing, totally ridiculous. Tell me you think so.”
“I think so.” Truth is, I don’t know what to think, and now Connor’s ducked under the American flag and into the open jaws of his garage, probably to spread the word on Dr. Sonfelter’s glorious past. I feel like I’m in a tug of war, with Connor tugging at my right arm, and Amy Lynn dragging me left. The game is to see how far one guy can stretch before he ends up with an empty sleeve flapping in the breeze.