Short Fiction

o’ course our furniture will be all paid for.”

“What with?” I ast her.

“Whatever you can get for your car,” she says.

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I was lucky in findin’ the whole school force in that evenin’. “Listen,” I says, to the one I’d seen first, “when I brought this ship in Saturday, what did I say I wanted done?”

“How do I know?” says he.

“Oh, I forgot,” I says. “O’ course you don’t know. I told you,” I says, “to pump up the left rear tire and to give me some gas and oil. I didn’t tell you to kill my batteries or take out my floor board or monkey with my clutch or gum up my cylinders or put my starter on the hummer or douse my lights. I just wanted gas and oil and air, them three.”

“And didn’t you get gas and oil and air?” says the one they called Jerry.

“I did not,” says I, “and you know it.”

“Well,” says Jerry, “I’ll tell you why: Pumpin’ a tire or fillin’ a tank with gasoline or pourin’ in oil, all that stuff’s a cinch; anybody can do it. But if we don’t take a few cars apart and put ’em together again, why, how’ll we ever learn?”

“And are you goin’ to charge me for the job?” I says.

“Only twenty dollars even,” says Jerry. “That’s twenty-five hours o’ labor at eighty cents an hour.”

“Boys,” I says, “I ought to murder all three of you, and the unwritten law’d acquit me. But I’m feelin’ too good.

“And besides, boys,” I says, “you’ve got me out o’ the rut. No more will I strain my eyes and benumb my brain with columns on columns o’ figures. From now on, I’m a carefree mechanic.”

The Yellow Kid

I

The first thing we found out about Crosby was that he couldn’t read. The next thing was that he was scared to death o’ women and girls. It was Buck Means that give us the info, and he done it out o’ spite.

You see, Buck and Crosby was with the Dallas Club together year before last, and Buck was sore because Crosby got drafted, while Buck was overlooked. And Buck didn’t like to see a kid with only one year’s experience go up, when Buck himself had been in the sticks four or five seasons and nobody’d paid any attention to him.

Crosby was recommended to us by Jake Atz. Jake wrote up along in July and ast if we could use the fastest young left-hander he ever seen. So the old man put in a draft and we got him.

Well, Jake was right about the kid’s speed. I’ve faced ’em all, from Rube Waddell down, but I never hit against nobody that could zip ’em through there like Crosby. If he ever beaned a man they’d have to get along afterwards without no head. O’ course that wouldn’t be no hardship to most o’ them. It wouldn’t affect the work o’ nobody on our club.

Our first exhibition game last spring was in Dallas. Buck Means was talkin’ to Gilbert and I before the practice.

“How’s Crosby comin’?” he ast us.

“I’m glad he’s on our club,” I says, “so I don’t have to hit against him all season.”

“He’s faster’n Johnson,” says Gilbert. “If he was only a little wild with it they’d all be swingin’ from the bench.”

“They’s no doubt about his smoke,” says Buck; “but he’s got nothin’ besides, not even a noodle. He can’t even read.”

“Can’t read!” I says. “Why, he looks brighter’n that.”

“Sure!” says Means. “He’s a good-lookin’ kid. But, from the shoulders up, he’s unimproved property.”

“Not bein’ able to read won’t hurt him,” I says. “He won’t be bothered if the newspaper boys handle him a little rough once in a while.”

“But if you got a joker on your club,” says Buck, “Crosby’ll be pie for him. McGowan, one of our outfielders, made a monkey of him all last year. He’d buy a paper and come and set down somewheres near Crosby and make up stuff that was supposed to be in there, and read it out loud. And he didn’t ‘read’ no compliments, neither, except when it come to Crosby’s looks. You see, that’s another thing about the poor simp: He’s afraid o’ skirts. He’s so bashful that if they’s a girl under ninety stoppin’ at the same hotel he’ll duck out and buy a meal at his own expense rather’n take a chance o’ havin’ her look at him in the dinin’ room. And McGowan, while pretendin’ that the papers was knockin’ him as a pitcher, pretended, besides, that they were always printin’ how handsome he was and how all the girls was wild about him. And, to make it good, Mac’d write fake love letters to him and he’d get somebody to read ’em, and then good night! He’d lock himself up in his room for a week and never come out, only to get to the ball park. We had him believin’ they was a girl in Austin that was crazy to marry him, and he was weak and sick all the times we was there, for the fear she’d call him up or he’d run into her on the street.”

Well, when I and Gilbert was alone, I says that maybe we’d better keep this dope to ourself, or somebody might take advantage o’ the kid and maybe spoil him as a pitcher. Gilbert was agreeable⁠—that is, he told me he was. But he didn’t lose no time spillin’ the whole thing to Harry Childs, and he couldn’t of picked out a worse one to tell it to.

Harry’d rather kid somebody than hit one on the pick, and him and Joe Jackson hates their base hits just alike.

So as soon as he got a chance he went after Crosby.

We was ridin’ to Fort Worth and Childs had a Chicago paper. He flopped down in the seat beside Crosby.

“Well, kid,” he says, “do you want to read what the reporters