“Bull,” I says, “I believe they’s somethin’ botherin’ you outside o’ losin’ your job.”
“You’re too smart to be playin’ ball,” he says.
O’ course I knowed then that Tommy’d been right—that the old boy had had a blow o’ some kind. And I was mighty curious to learn what’d came off. But I realized it wouldn’t get me nothin’ to ask.
We h’isted three or four together without exchangin’ a word. Then, all of a sudden, I seen a big tear streakin’ down Bull’s cheek and in another minute I was listenin’ to his story.
Bull’s parents is both dead—been dead five or six years. He never had no brothers or sisters or aunts or uncles or nothin’. He was born down South somewheres and didn’t have no use for cold weather, but his old man moved to Buffalo when Bull was about sixteen, so from that time till his mother and father died he spent his winters, and the summers before he went to umpirin’, up North. They wasn’t no reason why he shouldn’t suit himself after the old people passed out, so back South he went for his winters. He stayed in New Orleans the first couple o’ years, but it cost him a pile o’ money. Then he tried Montgomery, and that’s where he met the lady.
Her name’s Maggie, Maggie Gregory. Bull described her as the prettiest thing he ever seen, and so on. The Gregorys didn’t have so much dough that they didn’t know how to spend it. In fact, they was kind o’ hard up. The head o’ the house worked in a hardware store for somethin’ like fifteen a week. He had a son named Martin; yes, sir, the same Martin Gregory that Connie Mack let go last week and we got signed up now.
Martin and Maggie was twins. Maggie was learnin’ the milliner trade, but at the time Bull met ’em Martin wasn’t workin’ at all, except durin’ meals. He was one o’ the kind o’ guys that’d rather go to the electric chair, where he could be sure o’ settin’ down, than attend the theater and take a chance o’ havin’ to stand up w’ile they played the “Star-Spangled Banner.” If he’d lived in a town where they wasn’t no letter carriers he wouldn’t never got no mail. He’d of starved to death in a cafeteria with a pocket full o’ money.
He treated the whole of his family like they was waiters, and they treated him like he was the Kaiser. His mother was crazy over him, and Maggie used to split fifty-fifty with him on her princely salary. The old man never called him, and seemed to just take it for granted that Martin was born to have the best of it.
Bull landed in Montgomery the same time that the Gregorys made up their mind to take a boarder. They put an ad in the paper and Bull answered it. He answered it in the evenin’, when Maggie was home. After gettin’ a look at her, he’d of stayed there if they made him sleep in the sink and give him nothin’ to eat but catnip.
Maggie and Martin was eighteen then. They ain’t no use o’ me tryin’ to give you Bull’s description of her. Martin, accordin’ to Bull, was a handsome kid and had the best clo’es his sister’s money could buy. He was built like an ath-a-lete and his features was enough like the girl’s to make him good-lookin’. Bull fell for him this first night; he didn’t know nothin’ then about the feud between Martin and Work.
Well, they all treated Bull like he was an old friend and made him feel more like it was his own house than just a place to board. Maggie smiled at him every time she seen him, though it wasn’t no case o’ love at first sight on her part; she was just tryin’ to be friendly. The old lady worried if he didn’t take nine or ten helpin’s o’ whatever was on the table, and kept his room as neat and clean as Martin’s. The old man played rummy with him three or four times a week and give Bull good laughs on all his quick stuff. And Martin took kindly to him, too, figurin’ probably that the dough Bull paid for board would mean more dude clo’es in the wardrobe. Bull says he never knowed what this here Southern hospitality was till he went to live with the Gregorys.
It wasn’t till Bull had been there about three weeks that he told ’em what he done for a livin’. Well, the old people and Maggie didn’t know nothin’ about baseball except that Martin, when he was a kid, had been the best player in the school where he attended at. He’d told ’em so. But Martin himself, it turned out, was a nut on the national pastime. He knowed who Cobb was and who Matty was and their records, right down to little bits o’ fractions. Not only that, but he went to see the Montgomery bunch perform whenever they had the courage to face the home crowd. So Bull was a hero to him, in spite of his profession.
At meals, Martin wouldn’t talk nothin’ but baseball, and Bull had to talk it with him. I suppose the proud parents and Maggie felt kind o’ sorry for Bull, figurin’ that the kid, bein’ perfect, was gettin’ all the best of him in the arguments. The old boy was foxy enough to see that the easiest way to win Maggie was by helpin’ to make Martin look good. So when they’d got about so far in a fannin’ bee, Bull’d stop dead and say, “By George! You’re right,” even if Martin was arguin’ that Walter Johnson ought to learn to throw left-handed and play third base.
Bull thought he was just a fresh kid. He thought the reason he wasn’t workin’ was
