wrong. And I think he’s goin’ to do it tonight.”
VII
He done it—and that night too. I guess you know that, next to winnin’, Cap likes his missus better’n anything in the world. She is a nice gal, all right, and as pretty as they make ’em.
Cap’s as proud of her as a colleger with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. When the different papers would print Miss So-and-So’s pitcher and say she was the handsomest girl in this, that or the other place, Cap’d point it out to us and say: “My gal makes her look like a bad day outdoors.”
Cap’s wife’s a blonde; and—believe me, boy—she dresses! She wasn’t with us on this trip I’m speakin’ of. She hasn’t been with us all season, not since the trainin’ trip. I think her mother’s sick out there in St. Joe. Anyway, Hawley never seen her—that is, to know who she was.
Well, Carey framed it up so’s I and him and Cap went in to supper together. Hawley was settin’ all alone. Carey, brushin’ by the head waiter, marches us up to Hawley’s table and plants us. Carey’s smilin’ like he didn’t have a care in the world. Hawley noticed the smile.
“Yattaboy!” he says. “Forget the base hits and cheer up!”
“I guess you’d cheer up, too, if you’d seen what I seen,” says Carey. “Just lookin’ at her was enough to drive away them Ockaway Chinese blues.”
“That ain’t no way for a married man to talk,” says Cap.
“Well,” says Carey, “gettin’ married don’t mean gettin’ blind.”
“What was she like?” ast Cap.
“Like all the prettiest ones,” says Carey. “She was a blonde.”
“Where do you get that noise?” says Hawley, buttin’ in. “I s’pose they ain’t no pretty dark girls?”
“Oh, yes,” says Carey—“octoroons and them.”
“Well,” says Hawley, “I never seen no real pretty blondes. They ain’t a blonde livin’ that can class up with a pretty brunette.”
“Where do you get that noise?” says Carey.
“Where do I get it!” says Hawley. “Say, I guess I’ve saw my share o’ women. When you seen as many as I seen you won’t be talkin’ blonde.”
“I seen one blonde that’s the prettiest woman in this country,” says Carey.
“The one you seen just now?” says Hawley.
“No, sir; another one,” says Carey.
“Where at?” Hawley ast him.
“She’s in Missouri, where she first come from,” says Carey; “and she’s the prettiest girl that was ever in the state.”
“That shows you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Hawley says. “I guess I ought to know the prettiest girl in Missouri. I was born and raised there, and the prettiest girl in Missouri went to school with me.”
“And she was a blonde?” says Carey.
“Blonde nothin’!” says Hawley. “Her hair was as black as Chief Meyers’. And when you see a girl with black hair you know it’s natural color. Take a blonde and you can’t tell nothin’ about it. They ain’t one in a thousand of ’em that ain’t dyed their hair.”
Cap couldn’t stand it no longer.
“You talk like a fool!” he says. “You don’t know nothin’ about women.”
“I guess I know as much as the next one,” says Hawley.
“You don’t know nothin’!” says Cap. “What was this girl’s name?”
“What girl’s name?” says Hawley.
“This black girl you’re talkin’ about—this here prettiest girl in Missouri,” says Cap.
“I forget her name,” says Hawley.
“You never knowed her name,” says Cap. “You never knowed nothin’! We traded nothin’ to get you and we got stung at that. If you want your unconditional release, all you got to do is ask for it. And if you don’t want it I’ll get waivers on you and send you down South where you can be amongst the brunettes. We ain’t got no room on this club for a ball player that don’t know nothin’ on no subject. You’re just as smart about baseball as you are about women. It’s a wonder your head don’t have a blowout! If a torpedo hit a boat you was on and you was the only one drownded, the captain’d send a wireless: ‘Everybody saved!’ ”
Cap broke a few dishes gettin’ up from the table and beat it out o’ the room.
Hawley was still settin’, with his mouth wide open, lookin’ at his prunes. After a wile I and Carey got up and left him.
“He ain’t a bad fella,” I says when we was outside. “He don’t mean nothin’. It looks to me like a raw deal you’re handin’ him.”
“I don’t care how it looks to you or anybody else,” says Carey. “I still got a chancet to lead this league in hittin’ and I ain’t goin’ to be talked out of it.”
“Do you think you’ll hit when he’s gone?”
“You bet I’ll hit!” says Carey.
Cap ast for waivers on Hawley, and Pittsburgh claimed him.
“I wisht it had of been some other club,” he says to me. “That’s another o’ them burgs where the smoke and cinders kills your battin’.”
But I notice he’s been goin’ good there and he should ought to enjoy hisself tellin’ Wagner how to stand up to the plate.
The day after he’d left us I kept pretty good track o’ Carey. He popped out twicet, grounded out oncet and hit a line drive to the pitcher.
