Always October. C. E. Edmonson

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes and neither of us finding words to match our feelings. We’d crossed a line marking the boundary between excitement and awe. The crowd was settling in around us, filling in the empty seats. The sum of their conversations filled the air, relentless as a gathering of bees. A vendor appeared in the aisle near our seats: “Program, program, get your program.” Others sold ginger beer and popcorn and boiled peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Buried somewhere inside the park, an organist played popular tunes through the stadium’s public-address system.

      The Cubs ran off the field a few minutes later only to run back on a few minutes after that. They didn’t sing the national anthem back in 1917. The umpire shouted, “Batter up,” and the first St. Louis Cardinals batter stepped up to the plate. As he settled into his stance, the stadium announcer introduced him: “Now batting, Dots Miller.” And off we went.

      Dots Miller grounded out to third, and the following batter struck out. Then Rogers Hornsby, the St. Louis shortstop, took his stance in the batter’s box. Hornsby went on to make the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but he was still young back then, young and out to prove himself. He did exactly that by driving Hippo Vaughn’s second pitch over the wall in left-center field. I watched the ball rise and rise, watched it soar into the sky, recorded every inch of its arc almost from the time it left the bat. Yet I still couldn’t convince myself a baseball could be hit that far. From behind, I heard a man say, his voice filled with regret, “That ball traveled four hundred feet if it traveled a foot.”

      Amazed though I was, the crowd’s reaction—a collective groan that flowed from every throat—wasn’t lost on me. The Cardinals had scored first, and we were losing.

      From that moment on, I became part of a whole. The stadium was full, almost every seat taken, but there might have been only one person in the stands—one person with thousands of bodies, thousands of throats, cheering, groaning, following every pitch as attentively as the players themselves. Hippo Vaughn settled down after that first-inning mistake. He held the Cardinals scoreless through the next six innings. Unfortunately the Cardinals’ pitcher, Red Ames, matched him inning for inning until the bottom of the seventh. That was when the Cubs’ leadoff batter, Larry Doyle, smacked a line drive that got between the outfielders and rolled to the wall. By the time the St. Louis right fielder ran the ball down and returned it to the infield, Doyle was on third base.

      The next batter struck out, bringing the Cubs’ right fielder, Max Flack, to the plate. Flack swung and missed the first pitch, took a second pitch for ball one, then pulled off what was—to me and Eddie, anyway—a miracle that put the work of the prophets to shame. He bunted.

      The Cardinals’ third baseman fielded the bunt and threw home. Too late. Doyle slid in ahead of the tag. That should have been the end of it, with Flack on first and the game tied. But Max Flack didn’t stop at first base. He kept on running. The St. Louis catcher was too busy arguing the umpire’s call to notice at first. When he finally did, he uncorked a hurried throw that hit Flack and bounded toward first base. And Max? He just kept running.

      The throw to third was close, but Flack beat the ball. And, of course, he just kept running. He was fast alright, faster than anyone I’d ever seen, but this time the ball arrived well ahead of him. I could see it in the catcher’s glove when he stepped forward to block home plate, and I just assumed Flack would be tagged out. Max Flack, however, made no such assumption. No, sir. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the catcher without slowing down a whit. Dust flying, the two of them went head over heels, forcing the umpire to jump out of the way. Then the ball dribbled out of the catcher’s glove, and the crowd, including yours truly, went crazy.

      Everything came together in that moment. The trains, the big city, the crowds on the streets and the crowds in the stands, even the bright, June sky and the cotton-white clouds overhead. Never in my young life had I dreamed such a wondrous thing was possible. And I tell you this, tell you from the bottom of my heart: in my mind, despite many decades since my first trip to Chicago, Max Flack is still running.

      CHAPTER 6

      The Spanish flu came to Bear County in the spring of 1918. They called it the Spanish flu because it first popped up in the Spanish town of San Sebastian. Didn’t stay there long, though. The war to end all wars—World War I—was raging by then, with troops moving back and forth across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean in troop carriers. A month later, the first cases appeared in France. By June, the disease reached the United States.

      Of course, I was only a young fellow at the time, and though I considered myself knowledgeable—after all, I’d survived some time in grade school—the Spanish flu, or even the existence of flu, was beyond my horizons. The war held all my attention and the attention of my companions. Once a week, the Bear County Clarion posted the names of the county’s dead and wounded on a board outside its offices. And while the Army buried most of its dead near the battlefields, the wounded came home to us, some missing arms or legs or both.

      Still the best of friends, Eddie and I considered these men heroes, and we considered the battles they fought heroic. To an eight-year-old there’s no glory like the glory of war. Later on I learned better—learned the hard way.

      Two things about this particular flu were apparent from the outset. First, it was very contagious. “Catching” was what we said back then. Second, it didn’t seem to be all that severe. I caught the flu in June, my father a week later. For me, the illness was a minor and temporary misfortune, like the chicken pox or the mumps, both of which I’d already suffered through. I got sick alright. Sick enough to run a fever that climbed near to the top of Momma’s thermometer. My body ached all over and my head felt like it was ready to imitate the artillery shells falling on the soldiers in the trenches. Altogether I suffered for three days, with Momma tending me near every minute. Then the fever broke and I commenced a rapid recovery.

      No, what I remember most about that spring was Dad’s illness. Dad never got sick, never missed a day’s work. Seeing him flat on his back, his body covered with sweat, muttering to himself, shook me.

      “Dad’s gonna get better, right?” I remember asking Annie, who was charged with his care while Momma ran the store.

      “Course he is.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Lucas, don’t you have something else to do?”

      “No. I’m hungry.”

      Annie put her hands on her hips and shook her head, sending her auburn braids whipping back and forth. “You’re eight years old, too old to be a baby. You can fix your own lunch.”

      The comment didn’t surprise me. I shifted from baby to adult whenever it suited Annie’s intentions.

      “What about soup?” I asked.

      Annie didn’t answer. She walked over to the sink—yes, we did have indoor plumbing, another modern convenience denied to farm families—and filled a basin with cold water.

      “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to nurse our father. He’s sick, in case you’ve forgotten.”

      I had no answer to Annie’s charge. I never had an answer to Annie’s criticisms. Why bother? When it came to her little brother, Annie was always right and she knew it. So what I decided to do, as any intelligent boy would have under the same circumstances, was jam my Cubs cap on my head and go out to look for Eddie. I was mighty proud of that cap, with its logo of a bear cub holding a baseball bat, and I held on to it long after it ceased to fit my head. How I came to lose that cap is a story I expect to tell later on. Assuming you decide to stick around that long.

      “Lucas?” СКАЧАТЬ