If I Never Get Back
Other books by Darryl Brock
Two in the Field
Havana Heat
If I Never Get Back
A Novel
Darryl Brock
Frog Books
Berkeley, California
Electronic Edition: ISBN 978-1-58394-929-0
Copyright © 1990, 2007 by Darryl Brock. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the publisher. For information contact Frog Books c/o North Atlantic Books.
Published by Frog Books,an imprint of North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327 Berkeley, California 94712
Cover photo © Bobo/Alamy
Cover design by Gia Giasullu
Printed in the United States of America
If I Never Get Back is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.
North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Limited: excerpts from “Little Gidding” and “Burnt Norton” in Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T.S. Eliot, renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Elliot. Rights outside the U.S. administered by Faber and Faber, London. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Limited.
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.: epigraph from The Autobiography of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider. Copyright 1927,1940,1958,1959 by the Mark Twain Company. Copyright 1924,1945,1952 by Clara Clemens Samoussoud. Copyright © 1959 by Charles Neider. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brock, Darryl.
If I never get back: a novel / Darryl Brock,
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58394-187-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-10:1-58394-187-8 (pbk.)
1. Cincinnati Reds (Baseball team)—Fiction. 2. Cincinnati (Ohio)—Fiction. 3. Baseball players—Fiction. 4. Baseball teams—Fiction.
5. Baseball stories. I. Title. PS3552.R58I3 2007 813’.54-dc22 2006100436
For Lura
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
PART ONE: The Green Fields of the East
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART TWO: City on a River
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
PART THREE: The Pacific
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
In a sense this tale emerged from my historical rummagings as if it had always been waiting there. It pleases me that most of the characters were doing in 1869 what I have them doing, and that many events—even minor ones—occurred as I have shown them. Some, of course, did not.
Information and inspiration came from a generous number of sources. In 1985, while traveling the country and retracing the Red Stockings’ tour routes, I was aided by reference librarians in dozens of cities. Special thanks to Thomas R. Heitz, librarian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame; to W. Lloyd Johnson, Executive Director of the Society for American Baseball Research, and to others of my SABR colleagues for their energy and expertise; to Dahlia Armon of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley; to Elaine Gilleran of the Wells Fargo Bank History Department; to Bill Bloodgood of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival; to Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle; and to Karlyn Barker of the Washington Post.
I am indebted to Jack Finney for blazing a literary trail; to Peter S. Beagle, the sagest of guides, for his counsel and steadfast friendship; to Gemma Whelan, my Irish connection; to Julie Fallowfield and James O’Shea Wade, my agent and editor, whose patience and craft shaped a dream into existence.
Most of all I am indebted to my wife’s perceptions and loving enthusiasm; this work is dedicated to her.
Prologue
As a child I spent hours gazing at landscapes in the patchwork quilt my grandmother tucked around me. Farms and hamlets grew up in remnants of Grandma’s print dresses. Grandpa’s work shirts sprouted towns. Older, unfamiliar patches formed mysterious hinterlands. Over the years, imbuing each patch with mood and legend, I envisioned myself fording rivers in fabric hollows and scaling cloth peaks, traversing the ridged boundaries of thread to adventure with the imaginary folk of all my patchwork provinces.
Once or twice I was able to stare downward with such mindless concentration that I felt myself actually sinking into the topography I had created: it broadened and opened beneath me as though I were descending slowly in a balloon. All around, hazily at first, bright forms—orange houses, lavender pastures, blue hills—materialized and quickened with life.
Just as I began to drink in the sensations of this new world—the odors of grasses and blooms, the rustlings of birds, the shouts of children playing ball in the distance—I pulled myself back with a wrenching effort, and afterward lay trembling on my bed. What would happen, I wondered, if I ever went in all the way?
PART ONE
The Green Fields of the East
Nelly Kelly loved Base Ball games
Knew the players, knew all their names,
You could see her there every day,
Shout “Hurray” when they’d play.
Her boy friend by the name of joe
Said to Coney Isle, dear, let’s go,
Then Nelly started to fret and pout,
And to him I heard her shout:
Take me out to the Ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and crack-er-jack,
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team,.
If they don’t win it’s a shame,
For it’s one, two, three strikes,
You re out at the old Ball game.
JACK NORWORTH and ALBERT VON TILZER
. . . step to the bat, it’s your innings.
MARK TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Chapter 1
The Amtrak crawled out of Cleveland. I sat sweating in my new dark suit, staring out at the blackened brick walls from which milky light was beginning to ooze. Maybe I could hold it off. What had I been thinking about? The TV. Concentrate.
She opens her mouth wide: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! But I have no intention of hitting her. I shoulder past to the console squatting near the vaulted window of
