They set at lunch together the second day.
“Lefty,” he says, “looks like we’re goin’ to fight Germany. I was down to the White House this mornin’ to call on a friend o’ mine, a Mr. Wilson, and he says he don’t think we can hold out much longer.”
“Well,” says Crosby, “let ’em fight, as long as they leave us guys out of it.”
“Who says they’d leave us out of it?” Harry ast him.
“They’ll leave me out of it, all right,” says Crosby. “I never shot a gun in my life.”
“It ain’t guns they want you to shoot. It’s Germans,” says Childs. “And if the President called for volunteers I bet you’d be one o’ the first to go.”
“You’d lose your bet,” says the kid. “I can’t take no chance o’ gettin’ my left arm shot off.”
“Good Lord! That reminds me o’ somethin’,” says Harry. “I seen in the papers this mornin’ that most o’ the guns this country’s got is left-handed guns. And they’ll probably call for all the left-handed men in the United States to handle ’em.”
Crosby didn’t wait for no desert.
In New York, a couple o’ days later, Childs was at him again.
“War’s gettin’ closer every minute,” he says to Crosby.
“The Germans torpedoed the City o’ Benton Harbor yesterday and sunk eleven bootblacks without even givin’ ’em a chance to take their stands with ’em. And the Kaiser went fishin’ in the mornin’ and caught an American sturgeon. The President says if that kind o’ thing keeps up he’s offen the Kaiser and we’ll all have to enlist—that is, all the able-bodied guys.”
“That lets me out,” says the kid. “My ankles wouldn’t hold up a minute if I was to try and march.”
“They’d stick you in the calvary and leave you ride a motorcycle,” says Childs.
“I don’t know how,” says Crosby; “and, besides, a man couldn’t ride no motorcycle acrost the ocean.”
“Oh, yes, they could,” says Childs, “if the tires was blowed up tight enough. And, anyway, they’s lots of us would have to do our fightin’ here in this country, to keep the Germans from breakin’ up the League.”
I went in to breakfast with the kid the mornin’ we landed in Boston. I had a paper myself and they was a piece in it sayin’ that this country was thinkin’ about callin’ on all the young men o’ nineteen and twenty, to train ’em for war—that is, all the ones that wasn’t married. Childs, settin’ at the next table, read it and couldn’t get over to us fast enough.
“Crosby,” he says, “how old are you?”
“Twenty,” says the kid.
“You’re in tough luck, old boy!” says Childs; and he begin readin’ out loud. It was a cinch this time, because the readin’ matter was really there.
“Congress,” it says, “is considerin’ a proposition to start universal military trainin’ on account o’ the strained relations with Germany and the prospects o’ war. The plan is to draft every unmarried man in the United States o’ the ages o’ nineteen and twenty, and make ’em fit for war.”
Anyway, it was somethin’ like that.
“It looks like your baseball career was pretty near over,” Harry says to the kid. “It’s a crime too! You’ve had a great year, and without knowin’ nothin’ about pitchin’ at that. But still, it ain’t hard to learn to shoot and duck bullets; and they’s a whole lot o’ satisfaction in knowin’ that you’re workin’ for the Stars and Stripes.”
“When does this business come off?” says Crosby.
“Oh, not for a couple months,” says Childs. “They’ll probably leave you stick with us through the city series.”
Then Childs got up and left us.
“Bill,” says Crosby to me, “they ain’t no kiddin’ about this, is they?”
“No, Lefty,” I says. “It’s there in the paper, all right. But it just says they’re thinkin’ about it. If I was you I wouldn’t start worryin’ yet.”
“Bill,” he says, “before I’ll join a army I’ll walk out in Lake Michigan till my hat floats.”
“Quit frettin’ over it,” says I. “You won’t be able to pitch in this series, and you know we want some o’ these games.”
“But they’re goin’ to draft all the twenty-year-olds,” he says, “and I just broke into that class. I wisht to the devil I was your age.”
“Yes,” I says; “or married.”
“Married!” says Crosby. “That’s right! It’s just the single fellas that’s gone.”
“They ain’t nobody gone,” says I. “But if you don’t quit worryin’ you’ll be just as good.”
Childs spoiled whatever chance the Kid had to quit worryin’ by sayin’ to him, just before we started the game:
“Well, Lefty, they’s one pipe: You’ll be the handsomest guy in the army.”
Before Crosby was taken out, Harry probably regretted that remark; because in the five innin’s he pitched our outfielders must of ran back to the fence fifty times.
VII
Joe Martin told me about the kid bracin’ him in the hotel that night. “Joe,” Crosby says to him, “I’d kind o’ like to get acquainted with a girl.”
“Good Lord!” says Joe. “What girl?”
“It don’t make no difference,” says the kid. “Some girl that ain’t married, but might like to be, and ain’t liable to want to spoon or make eyes or nothin’ like that.”
“Are you thinkin’ o’ gettin’ married?” Joe ast him.
“Yes; only keep it quiet,” says Lefty.
“And do you expect a girl to marry you for your money?” says Joe.
“You know I got no money,” Crosby says.
“Well,” says Joe, “if you got no money and you want to get married, you got to find a girl that’s fond o’ you. And a girl that’s fond o’ you might want to hold hands sometime.”
“Ain’t they no sensible girl that might take me?” says the kid.
“What girls do you know?” Joe ast him.
“Joe,” he says, “I ain’t met a girl since I was fifteen or sixteen years old.”
“Oh, yes, you have,” says Joe. “How about that girl you was so nice to in Detroit?”
“Do you mean that girl
