The crew finally guided the crowd into the ballpark, which caused another human traffic jam because everyone stopped in wonderment at the shiny seats and the neatly trimmed grass as if, by sheer positive blinders, they could block out the rest of the shabby stadium.
Where the fans eventually sat, hands folded, faces smeared with various delicacies.
Dale touched Frecklie’s back and he nearly rolled down the steps. The pretty fifteen-year-old boy in the sparkling red dress with the biggest blue eyes in the world kissed him gently. You okay?
He had five thousand, three hundred and one, nope, Dale made five thousand, three hundred and two siblings inside a stadium with nothing to do.
Terrific.
Now what? Dale asked. This was her first baseball game.
Wait, he gestured a batter.
She yawned; Dale was easily bored.
BP wasn’t for another hour. He ran into the Hawks clubhouse, empty except for Ty grumbling over the lineup card in the manager’s office.
Cobb scowled. “Are you on my team?”
Frecklie shook his head.
“Can you read?”
He hesitated warily.
“’Cause if you can, the sign on the clubhouse door says players only. Now get your scrawny chink ass out of here.”
Frecklie raised his chin. “I need your help, Mr. Cobb. Your fans are here waiting to meet you.”
Ty quickly shaved.
At home plate, Cobb tipped his cap back off his forehead, squinting at the crowd as if he’d found them in his bathtub. “Are these the mute retards?”
The boy wasn’t sure what retards meant, only that it was similar to chink and spic and nigra and queer and all those other words Ty was fond of.
“Yes, sir. They’d like a real Hall of Famer to tell them about baseball.”
Ty smiled approvingly and cupped his hands on either side of his mouth. “Listen up, everyone.” Frecklie handed him a microphone. Cobb grunted. “Thank you for coming out so early. We’ll start making the signs bigger about when the game officially starts for any of you who can read English.”
Frecklie moved a couple steps behind and gestured, He means well.
“Now how many of you know anything about baseball?”
No hands rose. As Cobb growled, Frecklie gestured, Please someone.
Dale stood up and Frecklie fell in love with her even more. “How do you hit the ball, sir?”
“Well that’s a goddamn smart question, little girl. Hitting a baseball’s the hardest thing in all sports.”
Frecklie tossed him a bat.
“You got a little white sphere coming at you like ninety plus miles per hour…”
Frecklie gestured, Sometimes one hundred plus. The crowd oohed slightly. Ty grinned.
“Damn straight. It’s curving, dropping, rising, falling and you got less than a second to react. That’s right, less than a second. You got to decide to swing and then where you want to place the ball. Any of you want to take a shot?
When Dale leaped over the fence, Frecklie decided he’d propose the moment he graduated high school next year. She curtsied.
Ty looked past her pleadingly. “Any boys?”
Some of the DVs chuckled knowingly.
“Just me,” Dale said sweetly.
“Figures. What’s your name, honey?”
“Dale.”
“Like Dale Evans, the singing cowgirl.”
“Yes,” she curtsied again.
“You’re even prettier.” Ty winked. “Ever swung a bat?”
“No, sir.” Dale smiled.
From behind, Ty wrapped his arms around Dale and adjusted her grip.
“That’s good for a lady.”
“I try to do what a girl can do.”
“Ain’t much.”
“You’d be surprised, sir. Girls will be girls and boys will be boys and sometimes they get all mixed together.” Dale wiggled her butt into Ty’s groin and the crowd burst into applause.
They never stopped applauding. Sometimes they got it a little wrong, like when a foul ball bounced into the stands and back onto the field. But there was noise. Not just clapping. Dale, unleashed, started barking after Puppy struck out the first two batters and the crowd shyly, then exuberantly, picked up on the sound. No matter what Puppy did after that, good or bad, they barked. He surrendered a long home run in the second and they barked. He caught a swift one-hopper back to the mound and they barked. He struck out so pathetically he nearly toppled over and they barked.
And when Ty took Puppy out after five innings with a 5-2 lead and eight Ks, Frecklie loved how that abbreviation rolled off the tongue, Dale, never to be outdone, began howling. Soon the lower field boxes were a forest of wolfish dogs.
After the game, Frecklie flapped his legs over the gaping hole and balanced the sketch pad on his lap, sitting high up in the far upper deck under the white wooden trim in left field, the “brocade.” He loved the word brocade. K brocades. Brocade Ks. Around the horn with brocades and Ks.
He turned the page of Puppy’s Great Baseball Stadiums book to Fenway Park. That was a ballpark, he marveled, sketching more ideas on his pad. That wall. The Green Monster. His stadium would have a monster. Somehow, a dragon. He loved dragons. Maybe fire could come out of the scoreboard. Yes, he enthusiastically scribbled quicker, nearly losing his balance for a moment.
Frecklie wished his mother could see him near the top of the deserted stadium, afternoon rain coming, no rows below him, just a huge gaping hole where a rocket or missile or something had hit. She’d flip out.
He rocked a little and laughed.
• • • •
MOOSHIE SWUNG BY his table twice during Be My Baby. The first time, Kenuda hoisted up his glass; the second, he leaped to his feet and toward the stage, cheering and nearly drowning out the bridge until she quieted him down.
After the first set, she glad-handed through the crowd, cheeks peppered with well-wishing kisses, while Jimmy laid out a tray of food by Kenuda’s table. With mocking flair, Jimmy unfurled a white table cloth and laid down two candles. Elias waved him off as if he were a fly and pulled out her chair.
“I’ve done the best I can under the circumstances,” he apologized, glaring at the bottle of South Texas champagne. She boomed out a laugh
