The Essential W. P. Kinsella Read online

  “I’ll have the biggest size you’ve got,” he said.

  After Mrs. Richards delivered the lemonade in a sweaty, opaque glass, he took a long drink, stretched his legs, and looked around the room. He was wearing a black suit with fine gray pinstripes, a white-on-white shirt, and shoes that must have cost fifty dollars.

  “What do you figure he does?” whispered Stan. When I didn’t answer quickly he went on. “A banker, I bet, or an undertaker, maybe.”

  “He’s suntanned,” I said. “And look at his hands.” The knuckles were scarred, the fingers calloused.

  “What then?”

  “Howdy, boys,” the stranger said, and raised his glass to us. His voice was deep and soft.

  “Hi,” we said.

  “I see you’re ballplayers,” he said, nodding toward our gloves, which rested on the floor by the chair legs. “Is there much baseball played in these parts?”

  The question was like opening a floodgate. Stan and I told him about everything from the Little League to the Onamata High School team we played for to the University of Iowa ball club to the commercial leagues that had teams in Iowa City, Onamata, Lone Tree, West Branch, and other nearby towns.

  “How did your team do this year?” he asked us, not in the way most adults have of patronizing young people, but with genuine interest.

  “Well,” I said, “we were two and nineteen for the season. But we’re really a lot better ball club than that,” I rushed on before he could interrupt. The stranger didn’t laugh as most adults would have. “I kept statistics. We scored more runs than any team in the league. We’re good hitters, average fielders, but we didn’t have anyone who could pitch. A bad team gets beat seventeen to two. We would get beat seventeen to fourteen, nineteen to twelve, eighteen to sixteen. We’re really good hitters, especially Stan here. Stan’s gonna make it to the Bigs.”

  “I practice three hours a day, all year round,” said Stan, picking up my enthusiasm. “In winter I throw in the loft of our barn.”

  “Then you’ll probably make it,” said the stranger.

  “You look like you might be a player yourself,” I said.

  “I’ve pitched a few innings in my day,” he said with what I recognized as understatement, and he rose from his chair and made his way, with two long strides, to our table.

  “The thought struck me that you boys might like another dish of ice cream.”

  “You’ve had a good thought,” said Stan.

  “I notice my lemonade cost twenty-five cents, as does a dish of ice cream. I might be willing to make a small wager.”

  “What kind?” we both said, staring up at him.

  “Well now, I’m willing to bet I can tell you the exact distance in miles between any two major American cities.”

  “How far is it from Iowa City to Davenport?” said Stan quickly.

  “Those are not major American cities,” said the stranger, “but I noticed as I was driving in that the distance was sixty-two miles. What I had in mind, though, were large cities. Des Moines would qualify, as would Kansas City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas.”

  “How far from New York to Chicago?” said Stan.

  “Exactly 809 miles,” said the stranger.

  “How do we know you’re not making that up?” I said.

  “A good question,” said the stranger. “Out in my car I have a road atlas and inside it is a United States mileage chart. If one of you boys would like to get it for me . . .” As he spoke he reached a large hand into a side pocket and withdrew his keys. I grabbed them and was halfway across the room before Stan could untangle his feet from the chair legs.

  The interior of the car was still cool from the air conditioning. It smelled of leather and lime aftershave. There was nothing in sight except a State Farm road atlas on the white leather of the front seat. The very neatness of the car told a lot about its owner, I thought: neat, methodical, the type of man who would care about distances.

  I carried the atlas into the café, where the stranger was now seated across the table from Stan.

  “Let’s just check out New York to Chicago,” he said. “There’s always a chance I could be wrong.”

  He turned to the United States Mileage Chart, and all three of us studied it for a moment. In groups of five, in alphabetical order, there were eighty cities listed down the side of the chart; sixty names were across the top. Where the two names intersected was the mileage between them.

  “Yes, sir, 809 miles, just as I said.” The stranger put a big, square finger tip down on the chart at the point where New York and Chicago intersected.

  Up close, I noticed the stranger had a lantern jaw. He was also more muscular than I would have guessed, his shoulders square as a robot’s. His eyes were golden.

  I quickly calculated that there were nearly five thousand squares on the mileage chart. He can’t know them all, I thought.

  “Would either of you care to test me?” he asked, smiling. “By the way, my name’s Roger Cash.”

  “Gideon Clarke,” I said. “My friend, Stan Rogalski.”

  We both had money in our pockets, but we were saving for a trip to Chicago. My father had promised to take us up for an entire Cubs home stand.

  “Well . . .”

  “No bets, then. Just name some places. Distances are my hobby.”

  “Omaha and New Orleans,” I said.

  “1026,” Roger Cash replied, after an appropriate pause.

  We checked it and he was right.

  “St. Louis to Los Angeles,” said Stan.

  “Exactly 1836 miles,” said Roger.

  Again he was right.

  “Milwaukee to Kansas City,” I said.

  “1779,” he replied quickly.

  We checked the chart.

  “Wrong!” we chorused together. “It’s 1797.”

  “Doggone, I tend to reverse numbers sometimes,” he said with a grin. “Seeing as how I couldn’t do it three times in a row, I’ll buy you men a dish of ice cream each, or something larger if you want. A banana split? You choose.”

  It wasn’t often we could afford top-of-the-line treats. I ordered a banana split with chopped almonds and chocolate sauce on all three scoops of ice cream. Stan ordered a tall chocolate malt, thick as cement. Roger had another lemonade.

  “What made you memorize the mileage chart?” I asked between mouthfuls.

  “Nothing made me,” said Roger, leaning back and stretching out his legs. “I spend a lot of time traveling, a lot of nights alone in hotel rooms. It passes the time, beats drinking or reading the Gideon Bible. No offense,” he then said to me. “I don’t suppose that book’s named after you anyway.”

  “No, sir, I reckon it wasn’t.”

  “I’ve been known to gamble,” he went on, “on my ability to remember mileages, on the outcome of baseball games in which I am the pitcher. Never gamble unless the odds are on your side.”

  “Do you pitch for anyone in particular?” I asked.

  “I tried to take a team barnstorming one season. Unfortunately that era is long gone. I used to watch the House of David and the Kansas City Monarchs on tour when I was a kid. Costs too much to support a traveling team these days, and television has killed attendance at minor-league parks. No, what I do now is arrange for a pickup team to back me up—play an exhibition game against a well-known local team. . . . Say . . .” he said, and paused as if he had just been struck by a brilliant idea. “Do you suppose you men could round up the rest of your high school team? What did you say the name of this town is?”

  “Onamata,” we said together. “And sure, most of the players live on farms around here. We could round up a full team with no trouble at all.”

  “Well, in that case I think we might be able to arrange a business proposition,” he said.

  For the next few minutes, while Roger Cash outlined his plans, Stan and I nodded at his every suggestion. It was obvious he had done this kind of thing many times before.

  All the t
ime he was talking I had been eyeing the mileage chart, searching for an easily reversible number.

  “Have you spotted one that will beat me?” Roger said suddenly.

  “Maybe.”

  “You want to put some money on it?”

  “A dollar,” I said, and gulped; I could feel the pace of my heart pick up.

  “Yer on,” he said, turning his head away from where the chart lay open on the tabletop. “Name the cities.”

  “Albuquerque to New York.”

  Roger laughed. “You picked one of the hardest. A mileage easy to reverse. Now if I wanted to win your dollar I’d say ‘1997.’” He paused for one beat. I could feel my own heart bump, for the number he gave was right. “But if I wanted to set you up to bet five dollars on the next combination, I’d say ‘1979.’ I might miss the next one, too. People are greedy and they like to take money from a stranger. I might even miss a third or fourth time, and I always leave the chart out where a man with a sharp eye can spot another easily reversible number. You men aren’t old enough to go in bars, or I’d show you how it works in actual practice.”

  I took out my wallet and lifted out a dollar.

  “No,” said Roger. “Experience. I’ll chalk that dollar up to your experience. I have a mind for distances. I once read a story about a blind, retarded boy who played the piano like a master. And I heard about another man who can tell you what day of the week any date in history, or future history, was or will be. I have an idiot’s talent for distances.”

  “What’s so great about distances?” said Stan. “I think if I was smart I’d choose something else to be an expert on.”

  “Let me tell you about distances,” said Roger, his golden eyes like coins with black shadows at the center. “Six or eight inches doesn’t make any difference if the distance is, say, between Des Moines and Los Angeles, right?”

  We nodded in agreement.

  “Now suppose you’re in bed with your girlfriend.” He moved forward, hunching over the table, lowering his voice, because over behind the counter Mrs. Richards was doing her best to hear all of our conversation. “Suppose your peter won’t do what it’s supposed to do. If it won’t produce that six or eight inches, no matter how close you are to pussy, you might as well be 1709 miles away, which is how far it is from Des Moines to Los Angeles.” We all sat back and laughed. At the counter Mrs. Richards smiled crossly.

  “The distances in baseball are perfect,” Roger went on, “ninety feet from base to base, sixty feet six inches from the mound to the plate. Not too far, not too close. Change any one of them six or eight inches, the length of your peter, and the whole game would be out of kilter.”

  We nodded, wide-eyed.

  “Well, since we’ve got a team, all we have to do is find ourselves an opponent,” said Roger. “Here’s what I have in mind. Who’s the best pitcher in these parts?”

  “That would be Silas Erb,” I said. “Chucks for Procter and Gamble in the Division One Commercial League.”

  “Is he crafty or a hardball thrower?”

  “Ninety miles an hour straight down the middle, dares anybody to hit it.”

  “Scratch him. I want a guy who’s a curve baller, maybe tries to throw a screwball, has a wicked change.”

  “That’d be McCracken. McCracken Construction have been Division One champs two years in a row.”

  “And he owns the company?”

  “His daddy does.”

  “Would he be the kind to accept a challenge from an elderly baseball pitcher with a two-and-nineteen high school team on the field in back of him?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “If we were to get posters printed and build up this challenge game, what sort of attendance do you men think we could expect here in Onamata?”

  “People are hungry for baseball,” I said. “The King and His Court fastball team drew over a thousand in Iowa City in June. I think we could get five or six hundred out to Onamata for a game like that.”

  “At three dollars a head?”

  “Sounds fair.”

  Roger Cash grinned, the right side of his mouth opening up to show his dice-like teeth. I noticed then, even while he had a suit on, that his right bicep was huge, many inches larger than the left one.

  “Would you men care to accompany me into Iowa City this evening? You could point out Mr. McCracken’s residence to me. We’ll discuss our financial situation at the same time.”

  What he proposed to McCracken that night was a winner-take-all game, the Onamata High School team with Roger Cash pitching against McCracken Construction, Division One Champs and one of the best commercial league teams in the state.

  “‘And of course,’ I said to him,” Cash told us later, “‘I’ll be happy to cover any wagers you, your teammates, or the good citizens of Iowa City or Onamata might like to make, all in strictest confidence of course.’

  “‘At what odds?’ McCracken said to me.

  “‘Even odds, of course,’ I said. ‘Roger Cash is not greedy.’ And you should have seen him smile.

  “‘I’d like to see you work out,’ McCracken said to me.

  “‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘The element of surprise is all I’ve got on my side. I hear tell you played in Triple A for a year, so it’s not likely anything an old pitcher like me can throw will surprise you. Myself, I played a dozen games one summer for a Class C team in Greensboro, North Carolina, but they didn’t pay me enough to keep my mustache waxed so I moved on. Actually they suggested I move on, but that’s another story.’ I smiled real friendly at him.”

  Back in Onamata, after the game was set, Roger led us to the trunk of his car. As he opened the trunk of the cream-colored Caddy, Stan and I were on our tiptoes, staring over and around him. The trunk was almost as austere as the car interior. It contained a black valise, very old, almost triangular, with heavy brass latches, and a canvas duffel bag with a pair of worn black baseball cleats tied around the drawstring at its neck. A few garden tools were cast diagonally in the trunk: a rake, a hoe, a small spoon-nosed shovel. There was no spare wheel, and built into the depression where the wheel would ordinarily have been was what looked like a small, black safe, anchored in concrete in the wheel well. There was no dirt or dust, nothing extraneous.

  “We’re going to need some money to finance the operation,” he said, and smiled slowly, lines appearing in the deeply tanned skin around his eyes. “I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to turn your backs while I operate on Black Betsy here. I’d also be obliged if you kept the secret of her existence among the three of us.”

  The final statement was a command, though it wasn’t worded like one. Stan and I busied ourselves staring up and down the street and studying the front of the Springtime Café while Roger Cash turned the dial on the safe. It made sounds like a bicycle lock.

  “You can turn around now,” he said.

  The safe was stuffed with money. I have no idea how much, though I did see that most of the bills were hundreds.

  The deal was that each of the eight players to back him up were to get twenty dollars for the game. Stan and I got more for distributing 250 posters to businesses in downtown Iowa City and Onamata. We also distributed a thousand handbills to homes, as well as placing them on car windshields. And we were to be paid for selling tickets right up until game time. Roger suggested that we arrange to sell hot dogs, soda, and popcorn, since no one ever bothered to do that at the Onamata Baseball Grounds. He even peeled off a few bills from a collar-sized roll he carried, advancing us enough to buy and rent what supplies we needed, as well as to hire people for the concessions. In return, we were to split the profits. In the next few days Stan and I felt like real businessmen, going around hiring women three times our age to work for us the next Sunday.

  Roger needed a place to stay. There was no hotel in Onamata, never had been. I was quick to volunteer our home, where my father and I lived alone in an elegant old frame house with a wrought-iron widow’s walk. My father was engaged in a peculiar ba
seball research project, which took up most of his time. He left the operation of Clarke and Son Insurance to his secretary.

  “I need to ask you for another favor,” Roger said the next morning. “I need a place to work out, a private place. An old dog like me has to have surprise on his side. I don’t want McCracken or any of his spies to see me pitch until game time.”

  “I think I can arrange that,” I said. “My friends have a farm a mile from town. Mr. and Mrs. Baron are like grandparents to me. I know we can set up in their pasture.”

  A quick trip to Barons’ and we were able to find a natural pitcher’s mound in the pasture below the house. A few minutes with the tools from Roger’s trunk, and we imbedded a length of two-by-four in the mound. We dug a small depression and inset two pieces of wood side by side to form a crude plate after Roger had produced a well-worn tape from his duffel bag and measured out the exact distance from home to the pitcher’s mound. I held the beginning of the tape on the mound while he measured to the spot where home plate should be.

  Roger then dug out his glove and a ball. He gave me the glove and threw a few practice pitches while I crouched behind the newly installed plate. I guess I was expecting Sandy Koufax, because after about fifteen pitches I said, with that terrible candor the young consider honesty, “You’re not very good.”

  “You haven’t seen me with an enemy batter at the plate,” he replied. “I may not look like much, and I’m no Juan Marichal, but I change speeds, keep the hitters off balance; keeping hitters off balance is a pitcher’s most important function.”

  Since the game was set for the following Sunday afternoon, the preparations kept Stan and me running all week. Tuesday night we scouted McCracken Construction during a league game in Iowa City. McCracken pitched; he was a stocky, barrel-chested man with blue-black hair. He pitched a three-hitter. Roger made notes on the batters he would have to face.

  After the game we discussed strategy.

  “I’m gonna have you lead off,” Roger said to me. I had kept statistics on our team’s whole season, and I showed them to Roger. Stan kept track of only his own batting average; I took home scorecards after each game and calculated everyone’s batting average, on-base percentage, and fielding average.