Footsteps behind me ended the long silent moment.
“Andrew,” barked O’Donovan. “We saw you strike your blow and make your run!” He touched Cait’s arm with maddening familiarity. “Your sister stood and cheered lustily with the others, she did.”
She smiled, the first time I’d seen her do so. Her eyes crinkled and her lips parted, revealing white, straight teeth. For a moment she looked younger, as she must have been as a girl. I longed to know that younger Cait.
“I was proud, Andy,” she said. “Thousands screaming your name, and so many of them ladies.”
As Andy blushed deep red, Timmy appeared. He held his ball aloft. “See what Sam gave me?”
O’Donovan turned to me. “They truly pay you to sit beneath a sunshade?”
“Sam’s first substitute,” Andy said. “He only keeps the score book when he’s not playing.”
“Ah, the score book,” O’Donovan repeated acidly.
“Sam’s important,” Andy insisted. “Did you see his new booth?”
“Making sandwiches while you make runs,” O’Donovan said. “Poor work, I’d say.”
Cait murmured something.
I felt myself heating up dangerously. Who did this asshole think he was? “So far I’ve only seen a few of the costumes worn by hick clubs in the boondocks,” I said. “But I’ll bet they don’t come any sillier than the one you’re in.”
A faint gasp came from Cait. Timmy giggled and Andy nearly choked. O’Donovan blanched and stood erect in the carriage. His words came through clenched teeth. “This is the uniform of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. I’ll consider your insolence dark ignorance for the moment, only because a lady is present.” He snatched up the reins. “We’ll be leaving now, Caitlin.”
I lifted Timmy to the seat. Meeting Cait’s eyes I said, “I’m glad the lady is present.” Color spread across her cheeks. Her mouth tightened as she looked away.
We watched the carriage move down the lane. Timmy waved the ball at us. Andy waved back. My eyes were fixed on Cait. I sent her silent commands to turn and look back at me.
She didn’t.
Chapter 15
Harry and I lugged everything into the clubhouse. We’d spent the morning at Ellard’s Sporting Goods Emporium on Main; it claimed to have the largest stock of baseball equipment in the West. George Ellard, a regular on the club’s cricket squad, gave us wholesale rates, which was fortunate since lately we’d had a rash of broken bats. We bought a dozen of the finest: six willow, five ash, one elm—Brainard claimed he could only hit with elm—with handles prewrapped and sleek barrels ready to be branded with players’ initials. I’d already burned SF on the heaviest ash model.
We also bought a box of balls, six bases, a half dozen sets of brass spikes, a copy of Beadle’s Dime Book with current rules—Sweasy had torn up Harry’s old copy when an ump’s ruling went against him in the last Olympic game. Also a supply of elastic bands for our stockings—Harry had considered garter belts, but I talked him out of it—and several cane-handled cricket bats.
“Congratulations on your booth,” he said, and went on to confess that he’d failed as a concessionaire himself. The previous winter, after the club had flooded the Union Grounds to form its annual skating pond, Harry had sold coffee, canned peaches, New Orleans oysters, and even—surprisingly—hot whiskey drinks. Despite offering baseball on ice and other attractions, the club hadn’t made a dime. “You, though,” he said, “seem to know what people want. Such bold ideas!”
I smiled modestly, as if bold ideas were my forte. “More coming,” I said, and hoped it was true; Johnny was scouting future projects that day.
“I’ve tried the new fungo bat,” Harry said. “I’m improving.”
I’d had the lumber company turn a slender hardwood fungo. With it I could put a ball inside a twenty-foot radius anywhere on the field. I used it to give Andy the extra work he wanted on deep drives. Harry had seen its applications immediately and put me to work drilling all the outfielders.
Otherwise he treated me like everybody else, working me each day till I dragged. At night my muscles jerked as I heard him yell, “Runner on second, one out!” In part his purpose was to keep us from getting big heads. Not an easy task, given the mounting hoopla. Repeatedly he advised caution in accepting merchants’ favors, restraint in drinking—the specter of Hurley hung over us, though Harry never referred to him—and avoidance of gamblers.
Heat descended on the city. Blistering, sweltering, lung-searing heat. Pavement and brick sidewalks burned through shoe leather. Dung in the streets flaked into particles and was swept up by sultry air currents off the river to mix with soot and form a toxic, eye-stinging dust; people walked outside with their heads completely covered. Horses collapsed on the cobblestones, unable to pull streetcars or buses up the steep hills even in double and triple teams. Each day the papers carried lists of people who’d succumbed to sunstroke. Air-conditioning, I fantasized, sweating from morning to night. Cold showers . . .
Ice was in tremendous demand. Floated down canals in great blocks from Lake Erie each winter, it was packed in sawdust and stored in underground icehouses. Now its price shot to unprecedented heights. Johnny and I had been trying to add sodas to our Union Grounds fare. The soda-water business, a fairly new industry, was booming. Inexplicably, nobody had yet come up with ice-cream sodas. At first Johnny thought I was crazy mixing the two, but after a few tentative sips, followed by deep pulls and considerable lip-smacking, he pronounced me a genius. Our trouble was that rocketing ice costs boosted our selling price to thirty-five cents each. We decided to try it as a luxury item, figuring that the swells accompanying satin-bedecked women with silk parasols could well afford it.
In the middle of one of the very hottest days, in a burst of inspired bravado, I had Johnny deliver
