“Thanks.” I reflected that I’d be on it too if I didn’t make myself scarce. “By the way, who was the woman with Morrissey?”
“Name’s Elise Holt.” He looked wistful. “Leg-show queen, one of them British Blondes.”
Leg-show queen?
“Somethin’ to nibble, ain’t she? Here’s my advice: Don’t trouble yourself thinkin’ about her.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause she’d fix your flint ’fore you could begin to spark her.”
The fight boosted my status considerably. To Harry I was now Sam instead of Fowler; George sought me out to share his choice stereopticon views; Mac and Gould, the team’s enforcers, let me know they’d accept my assistance in a pinch; Waterman allowed as how he might be willing to play cards with me again sometime; Brainard, wearing a shiner, insisted we begin his boxing instruction at once; Sweasy was relatively inoffensive; and of course Andy was proud beyond all measure. “Ain’t Sam a dinger?” he demanded repeatedly. Hurley topped them all by coming up with a dandy quote from Pilgrim’s Progress:
“How doth the Fowler seek to catch his Game
By divers means, all which one cannot name?”
It was all very warm and flattering, although I felt guilty about the fight. An old pattern. At Berkeley, even winning the 190-division Pac-Ten title, I’d had to work myself into a rage to perform, as against Craver (or, for that matter, Stephanie’s parents’ TV). But when the rage passed I felt only shame. Victorious, I’d exploited sick emotions. Defeated, I’d unleashed them for nothing.
My coaches said I lacked a killer instinct; at some level I had to want to put opponents away. But I could never really get into it. And so I put out of mind that Craver was a bullying animal, even that he’d injured Andy and Allison. I dwelt instead on his lack of training, thinking I’d had a huge advantage. Stupid, I know, and probably self-defeating as hell.
Under the best conditions I’m hardly a cheery riser. The next morning I set new records in mood foulness. My body felt as if it had been systematically hammered. My hands were mittens of flesh: the knuckles looked like they’d pounded nails; the fingers were too swollen to bend. My forehead was purple. My gashed cheek was seeping again. I’d slept fitfully. I didn’t want any more beefsteak for breakfast—invariably overcooked, with a thin slab of bone in the center, swimming in butter and laden with coarse black pepper. I was fed up with baths in cramped zinc tubs. I wanted a decent shower—which mystified Andy, to whom all bathing except after games was strictly a once-a-week concept. And I was tired of remembering to say “dinner” when I meant “lunch” and “valise” when I meant “suitcase.” I broke my goddamn collar button, too.
The day’s start, however, was nothing compared with its end.
We entrained shortly before noon. The sky was clear when we left Troy, but cold winds and showery squalls hit during the short hop to Albany. Crossing the river from Rensselaer—situated, George informed us, directly over the fort where “Yankee Doodle” had been written—we saw a flotilla of enormous side-wheel steamboats working the Hudson. Fulton’s Clermont, the first steam-powered craft—a hundred feet long and twelve and a half feet wide—docked at Albany during its maiden cruise in 1807. Now, George reported enthusiastically, leviathans like the Isaac Newton were four hundred feet long, seventy-five wide, and forty-seven deep, with sleeping accommodations for seven hundred passengers.
The others looked suitably impressed. Yes, I thought, let’s hurry up and destroy the rivers faster.
We passed through a patchwork of foundries and shipping yards crammed with cattle and lumber. As the Erie Canal’s eastern terminus, Albany was a major export point by water and rail—George had a card picturing the DeWitt Clinton, one of the nation’s first trains, which had chugged out of the city and into history only thirty-eight years previously.
It was all so new, yet already happening so fast.
Albany’s Nationals, our afternoon opponents, took us to their clubhouse on North Pearl, where we suited up. My uniform was still damp and ill smelling. With Andy out and Allison questionable, there was a strong chance I’d play. I chewed gum and concentrated.
I could have relaxed. The contest was so one-sided that few of the spectators who braved the forbidding weather were around by the end. A solitary pool seller did little business. There was no sign of Morrissey, McDermott, or Le Caron.
It went only seven innings. Hurley made the most of his chance to play by pulling two homers down the right-field line. Gould smashed another. George and Hurley each banged out seven hits. Harry made a one-handed catch in center, and Sweasy, Waterman, and George stole three bases apiece. Huddled together over the score book, Andy and I managed to keep warm. After the Haymaker game, this was like schoolyard exercise. We won 49-8.
The Stockings’ record was now a neat 10-0.
Amid talk of the tough games awaiting us in Brooklyn, we ate a hearty supper at the Delavan House, a noisy establishment at Broadway and Steuben, “junction of all railroad lines.” We would soon board another train, this one for Springfield, Massachusetts, where we’d play the next day, then on to Boston for three contests.
It happened just after I stepped out the door of the Delavan House. I heard a voice—“Say, there!”—and turned to see a figure beckoning to me with a lantern. He stood in darkness at the end of the long veranda. A slouch hat shadowed his features. “Could you hold this light? I’m trying to fix my horse’s shoe.”
Something about the voice was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t think about it then. “Sure.” I looked around; the others were still inside. “I’ve got a minute or two.”
“Much obliged,” he muttered, head down, as I approached the corner of the porch. “Here, you take the lamp and steady her head, I’ll—”
Then he stepped back. In the lantern’s halo I recognized McDermott’s features. A grin curved his mouth;
