Moody Riley: You Know... You Wouldn't Know.

By Paul Donnelly

"At last, the great American baseball novel..."

The lost story of a ballplayer passing in the deadball era.

Moody Riley knocks around the major leagues as a solid but mediocre player for more than twenty years. A light-skinned toddler who survived a lynching, Moody spent his childho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donovan & Dulles, Publishers
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781948824408

Paul Donnelly

In 1989, Paul Donnelly entered the PhD program in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his doctorate in 1997 and is now an associate professor and director of the Religious Studies program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

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Moody Riley

You know… you wouldn’t know.

Paul Donnelly

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Donovan & Dulles, Publishers

Copyright © 2023 by Paul Donnelly

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.This is True Because It Isn't How It Happened...

2.Fleetwood Fades Away But Is Not Eclipsed

3.If It Was a Test, He Passed

4.In Which We Learn of Ancestry and Commerce

Bottom of the First

5.God’s Big Brother

6.Setting a Course Over the Trackless Waters

7.The Road Not Taken

8.The Best Loses a Third, The Worst Wins a Third: The Other Third Makes the Difference

Top of the Second

9.The Pendulum Between Money and Time

10.Only One Side to Moving On

11.Ropes Are Twisted

12.Winter Where It’s Summer

Bottom of the Third

13.The Pearl of the Antilles

14.Like Crackers in Bed

15.Arise, My Love, My Fair One, And Come Away

16.She Was Not

17.We’re All Irish in the Dark

Top of the Fourth

18.To Move Forward, You Must First Go Back

19.God is Never Just Kind

20.Everything Beautiful Suffers

21.Owning Land is a Filthy Strength

22.In the End

Bottom of the Fifth

23.Contradictions Are Impossible Yet Common as Women

24.The Big Why

25.The Delivery is the Message

26.Earning Your Living At A Game

27.That Pocket Is For A Sap

Bottom of the Sixth

28.Pour The Metal In The Mold; Throw The Dice

29.Bending The Rules For Boners

30.See A Penny, Pick It Up

31.Indeed Doubting

32.Geometry, Geography, and Justice

33.We Don’t Need Players, We Need a Team

The Stretch

34.Around The World

35.Consider the Lilies

36.A Blaster from The Past

37.Two Bibles

38.Knock-Knock

Bottom of the Eighth

39.Isn't it Grand, Boys?

40.Grind Slow, Grind Small

41.Just One Swing

42.Thus Passes The Glory Of The Earth

43.Summer Is Outside Time

44.Upward Roots

45.Wait Till Next Year

46.It’s Not Betrayal If You Get Paid

Top Nine

47.What Begins Will End

48.Nothing Falls that Cannot Rise

49.A Hard Year, and Another.

50.Wrenged

51.When What Is Not Told Is True

52.When You’re Ahead, You Don’t Get Up

Andrew

Andrew Rube Foster becomes the manager for the Leland Giants around 1910 (Caldwell Collection, NLBM)

More than you may think is real, but this is a work of fiction.

Chapter 1

This is True Because It Isn't How It Happened...

The older man shoo’d away the last of the boys, the porter respectfully deferring to fame. But first he had the other guy sign one, though no one asked. This is Christy Mathewson, he told the boys, finishing this autograph session with extra flash for the J's. He tossed it to the shy, littlest one in the back. Hold on to that one, young man!

Settling into his seat with an air of aggressive contentment, John McGraw opened the newspaper loudly, crumpling the edges with big fingers while he looked down inside for something. Even with only legs and fingers visible in front of the broadsheet, he looked ready to punch somebody. The younger man watched, his hair immaculately combed and oiled over his classic forehead. The front-page headline had caught him, so he picked up his own copy of the paper.

The lede simply astonished him, and his athlete’s eyes sharp, very calm, yet darting, devoured the headline, the pictures; he was inside, reading rapidly down the columns. Two brothers, mechanics who made bicycles, were reliably reported to have performed a miracle, so, after months of rumors, the reporter had gone to see.

Nothing the good-looking young man had ever heard of was so amazing. He grinned to himself, thinking. What do they say? This story has legs.

Full of the possibilities of the new century and his life in it, the young man looked up, his heart bursting with things to say, and then he quickly looked back down.

But something so incredible required that he Witness. Trying to do this so as not to disturb his companion, he breathed, with conviction, What hath God Wrought, His wonders to perform.

What? The broadsheet came down with as close to a crash as eight sheets of paper can manage. I didn’t hear you.

The news, did you see it?

Yeah, I did. Ban Johnson is a dumsumbitch. It was one word: dumsumbitch.

The young man froze, his intelligent eyes troubled for the space of a heartbeat. He didn’t like vulgarity, couldn’t get used to it. But he had to get along with fellows.

No, I meant, he gestured at the paper. Well, never mind.

The other leaned forward, his concentration disturbed. You hit good, you know, good for a pitcher. I know why Hogel wanted you at first base. He reached out, and took the paper off the younger man’s lap, glancing at the headline—the woodcut drawing of something that looked like a kite, with big, box type saying FLYING MACHINE under it—and dropped it to the floor when he went on. But you put all that out of your mind. I don’t want you playing every day, no matter how good you hit. Hitting isn’t as important as Hogel thinks, anyhow. Good pitching beats good hitting, at least, good pitching when you need it, beats good hitting that comes just any old time. And that’s when hitters hit, mostly. You remember that.

The older man wondered if he should tell the younger man that he had promise; that this was why they were here. But he just looked hard for a moment.

Satisfied, the stocky fellow looked out the window. The young man considered reaching to get his newspaper back and decided against it.

The older man said one more thing, still staring out the train window. And when we get there, remember what I told you about him.

Not far away, getting closer all the time, a kid made of knees and elbows who could have been anywhere from 12 to 16, was standing as close to a Franklin stove as he could get without burning his ass, moving his arms slightly to the beat of a band in his mind. He was being studiously observed with amusement, but not watched.

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March was still cold in Cortland County. The sun was shining through long shadows across the morning field and, sleeping late, the boy had just finished breakfast. He expected to have fun this day, but it was too cold to play ball in the mornings yet. The band playing in his head reached crescendo… And now, ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages!

Moody! The rich voice broke into his thoughts, like a bell of command.

The boy stood still, willing the heat on his back to envelop his body, without having to turn around and let his behind get cold to warm up his thighs and shoulders.

Surely you do not imagine that you will warm yourself for the day’s exertion simply by standing next to a source of heat? The owner of the voice entered the little room with the peculiar grace of a muscular fat man.

Remove yourself from the stove, Moody. You will only court cramping and illness in your muscles, brought about by an external application of what should be an internal generation.

Yessa, Mr. Foster.

I suggest that you run to the left field fence and ensure that the gate is open. From that vantage, you will be able to see if the Newburgh mail will arrive at 10 o'clock as the stationmaster’s schedule has it, or if perhaps that ostensibly factual work has degenerated into fiction. Upon your return, taking care to leave that gate open and ascertain that all others are locked; we want no unauthorized spectators. We will discuss today’s installment of your education.

Moody knew better than to dawdle. Besides, he was grateful to the man, always and everywhere. Including for this chance to warm up, albeit in a manner that would not have occurred to him.

He loped off, and while his back did feel the chill air, he was soon much warmer with a run of even a few hundred feet down the third base line.

There were four gates to the ballyard’s unpainted board fence, too high to see over and braced on the inside: one at the end of each foul line by the tall pole, and two behind home plate. There was something manic about the easy way he ran, like a frightened child playing. He wasn’t breathing hard when he had checked all gates and returned, his face blank.

Perhaps an hour later (since the Newburgh mail was indeed on time), having secured lodgings and changed from travelling clothes, the visitors arrived through the left field gate, and walked purposefully to the dugout, down the steps, and into the little room with the Franklin stove. There, they saw the muscular fat man was busying himself by reading the newspaper, while a teenager was straddling a stool and juggling three baseballs, humming to himself. The boy caught them quickly and stopped at the sight of the two, pausing for a moment to look around.

Hello, Rube. The stocky visitor walked straight to the seated one, who looked up as if in mild surprise to be called by that name, then stood, with elaborate courtesy.

Why, pint size Napoleon!

There was an exchange of what might have been smiles at what was evidently a private joke between them. They shook hands, and the white man moved back a half-step, indicating the tall, handsome fellow standing by, a little awkwardly.

This is… Christy.

The handsome fellow wasn’t sure where to put his gaze. He had never been in a black person’s home. Somehow, he thought this is how that would feel, this office behind the dugout, with dank showers a few feet away and a Franklin stove burning. A dark burly man looking him up and down, McGraw standing aside and a ragged sandy-eyed teenager sitting shyly with four baseballs in his hands.

Christy, this here is Drew Foster. Real fans call him Rube now.

I heard about that, Matty said to McGraw. It was a famous victory.

It has marquee value, Foster said, standing up.

A pause, then he diverted it. Something about a sane man defeating a maniac is reassuring enough to re-assign the monicker as a laurel of victory.

Mathewson stepped forward, grateful for the ritual. Hello, Mr. Rube. Please call me Christy, or Matty.

Foster took the hand, lithe long fingers and a broad palm, into his great calloused mitt, like a mastiff meeting a greyhound. Then he paused for a moment before speaking. John, I don’t know why he couldn’t be a first baseman.

Christy looked at the ragged boy, who looked away, mental cymbals ringing.

Hello, son. His voice was quiet under the louder tones of the other men.

That’s just shit, Rube. The bushes are full of guys who can hit and throw and catch the ball with one foot in a bucket. They can win games, but they can’t win a pennant for me, and that’s how to make money in this business.

Foster looked back at Mathewson, who thought again that he was missing something. Well, let us end this speculation and try the experiment. Moody, get your bat.

As they walked out to the field, McGraw watched for Moody to swing a few times, then chose on which side to stand, first setting down the bucket of balls near home plate.

Foster walked Mathewson to the mound, speaking as one accustomed to being obeyed, yet with suitable deference. I’ll catch for you. We’ll start out as with the present situation, a young batsman, hitting right-handed. You’ve never seen him before; slight of build, but big in the legs, and he holds his hands apart on the handle. The bat looks too big for him.

Foster handed him the ball and paused before letting it go.

You’ve marked all that, of course? Now, we shall use rudimentary signs. My index finger down is a fastball, two fingers are a slow ball, and three fingers are a curve. My legs and chest mark up or down, in and out. You can throw a curve?

Yes, and I have a drop ball, too. It fools hitters by seeming to fall. Mathewson’s voice betrayed the slightest irritation.

I understand you are a college man, Mr. Mathewson, Foster said. "Esse quom videri. I need not translate?"

To be, not to seem, Christy used his respond-in-class voice.

Foster nodded. Let us commence.

He put on a two-bar mask, but no mitt for his big worn hands, and he set himself far back from the plate, old-fashioned field it on the bounce style.

Moody stepped in, setting his feet, and adjusting the swing of the bat, with about three inches between his fists on the wood. The first pitch was a fastball, a little low and outside.

Ball! the catcher called, grabbing it with his bare hands and tossing it lightly back. He signaled for a second fastball, touching his left thigh and then his rib cage quickly. The ball snapped in quickly, exactly where he called for it, and Moody rapped it easily through the empty infield. Mathewson watched it go, automatically recording that it bounced right where the third baseman should have been playing a right-handed hitter.

There! Moody’s mental band struck up a triumphant march, as the ball accelerated in his head from a mediocre grounder into a bullet past the diving third baseman.

Gimme another.

Nice pitch, called Foster, tossing out another ball from the bucket.

A matter of fact. Moody had the peculiar quality of hearing his own thoughts. Since he had always been that way, he didn’t notice it.

For half an hour, they played catch, with Mathewson twirling pitches in, out; up, down; fastballs, slowballs, curves. Moody swung regularly and clipped a couple through the infield, a foul or two. Without fielders or baserunners, it was easy for Mathewson to concentrate on the hitter and his catcher, the big black man far behind the plate, his eyes brightly dark behind the mask. No one talked.

McGraw just watched, impassive despite the chill. Mathewson was soon sweating in his big loose jersey, grunting when he bore down hard.

Foster let him pace himself, and Mathewson thought it pardonable pride when his fastball made the big man wince, although he noticed Foster kept calling for it.

Don’t think, don’t think. Listen. Don’t think. The brass, the drums. Rhythm. Watch. there’s the ball coming Quick. Watch it go flat on the bat.

About every six or eight pitches in various places, most of them fast or slow, a few curves, Foster would call for a drop ball. He improvised the sign, his fist, pushed straight down, and Matty got it as soon as he saw it. The first few times, Mathewson didn’t notice when Foster called for the drop—with just one hitter—they kept the count like it was a game, including strikeouts and starting over after a fair ball.

Throw that again, Moody thought.

It wasn’t until he had thrown five or six drop pitches that Mathewson noticed that Foster was only calling for the drop when the count was heavy against the batter, 0-2 or 1-2, and after a high strike, and always outside.

Matty didn’t like to throw deep in the count. Let ‘em hit it, was his philosophy, the fastest way to get outs.

That’s when Foster would call for the drop just off the plate outside. Sometimes the big curve, mostly the drop. He had just reached that conclusion, his mind automatically recording what was going on a few beats behind the action, when Foster called for the second straight fastball, high and outside. Moody guessed wrong, punching powerfully at the air toward first base, an 0-2 count, when suddenly Foster stood up and pointed right at the mound, holding the ball.

Mathewson looked around, startled. There was nobody there, just McGraw looking at him, the slim, sandy-eyed batter stepping out of the box, looking at Foster, and the big black man holding the ball with his right hand, pointing to him with the other.

You are befuddled, young man? Foster tossed the ball back to the pitcher’s mitt.

You have become predictable, and yet you seem not to know it.

Quite suddenly, Mathewson was conscious who had been giving him orders.

Moody stepped out of the box and took some swings down, easy, fast and loose.

You don’t know I’m a Negro. Light as a paper bag.

Foster turned to go back and motioned the batter to the other side of the plate. Then he thought of something and walked back to the mound, reaching for the ball.

Reluctantly, Mathewson let him rub it as they spoke.

I won’t make calls for a while. I believe you should just try to pitch a little, now that you know this hitter, some. Hands apart, punches the ball mostly, misses some, gets wood on it with two strikes. But you struck him out pretty easy from the right side. Let’s see what you can do with a switch-hitter batting lefty.

Mathewson shrugged.

Moody listened. That’s what I am. A matter of fact.

Moody stepped in on the other side, swinging loosely. Hear the bugle call.

Moody set deeper in the box this time. Mathewson found himself watching for the sign, and when none was coming, he shook his head, as if shaking one off, and then bore down, deciding to drop inside. He wound up, resting his hands for a second on top of his head, and then snapped off a nice twirler, which dropped a clean foot over the last twenty feet to the plate, low and inside.

Ball! barked Foster, who grabbed it easily and popped it back to him.

Now, fastball high and inside.

Mathewson got his fully warmed up arm into it, grunting slightly as he let it go. He watched Moody’s hips jump-to like a gate slamming, right foot stepping toward first, practically throwing the bat into the ball, which struck hard far down the first base line, fair by a yard and scooting off to rattle around in the corner.

That’d be a double if he could hit it 10 feet farther. It was the first thing McGraw had said since coming out of the dugout.

Triple, more probably. He is deceptively fleet of foot, said Foster, standing to watch the ball roll to a stop a hundred yards away.

He spoke softly now. Moody will get you a lot of walks, some hits, too, and he can run alright. With no strikes, he’s a fine judge of the plate. With one strike, the pitcher has to hit his spot. But with two strikes, he always puts it in play.

Always?

McGraw let himself glance at Foster.

Unhearing, Moody just grinned and settled back in the box, looking at Mathewson. There, now.

I shall recommence calling pitches, Mr. Mathewson, Foster squatted back down.

He held out four fingers and touched his right shoe. A moment later, he held one finger down, and then brushed his right ribs. Mathewson resisted shaking his head and saw Moody fan at both pitches.

Over the next 20 minutes, Moody struck out six times and hit four solid shots through the infield, including one that rolled to the wall up the left field alley. McGraw let him strike Moody out one more time on a slow inside curve, then waved it all over.

Foster joined him at the mound. A helluva job, he said.

Bullshit, McGraw snapped. This kid was clobbering him.

Without fielders. Moody kicked at the grass.

Foster stood up straight for a moment, looking back to where Moody had turned the bucket over and saw on it. He was tossing two baseballs with one hand, one after another. The big man motioned at Moody, turned back, and patted McGraw gently on the back. They both looked at Mathewson.

Foster asked, What pitch did he hit into right field?

McGraw interrupted. What was the pitch before that one?

Foster looked at Mathewson. Well?

Mathewson hesitated and started slowly.

I threw two, no, four high pitches to him. He struck out after the first two, then you called for a high curve. I think you wanted a strike, but it missed inside. Then he hit a high fastball about here, he indicated the top of his ribcage. He looked at both men, who were waiting.

He was way ahead, to pull it like that.

Foster looked at McGraw again, then sharply at Mathewson. He stalked off far up into the grass, a little high, near the fence, where he stood quietly, legs apart, hands in front and back to them, for a few moments.

McGraw turned the bucket over, then put it down. Mathewson walked over, but had nothing to say, just stood there, enjoying his breath and the sweat.

Well, it’s his ballyard, McGraw said to Matty when they both looked over to wonder what Foster was doing.

Moody was walking slowly around the ballyard, picking up the baseballs and tossing them to roll toward the bucket. McGraw glanced at the odd way the kid was jerking his knees up on his way from one to another, in his own little world in the outfield.

When Rube returned, the balls were still coming in, rolling across the infield. He walked up to the older man, standing quietly. Mathewson waited.

Mr. John, I’ll do it.

He looked at Mathewson. Most of us learn a little when we win, Mr. Mathewson. But you can learn everything when you lose. The training of Christy he’d just agreed to had begun.

Matty didn’t understand what he meant by lose, but he dismissed it quickly. So, the kid had a couple good hits, he thought, dismissively.

There was a lull then, which left McGraw a moment with time on his hands.

Didn’t last long. He pulled his old flat-side lignum vitae bat out of the bag, longer, heavier and harder than most bats, it looked like it had been chewed by time, which it had.

Hey, kid! Field some grounders.

Obediently, as from long habit, Moody settled into the little rocking stance of an infielder one step on the grass.

McGraw rapped five or six to each side of the kid with the round side, testing his range. Moody moved his feet crabwise, dropping his butt and fielding the ball cleanly with both hands and his glove well in front when he moved to his left; when he moved right, he backhanded when he had to, nicely.

McGraw noted his range wasn’t great, but his fundamentals were sound. He planted his feet before he threw, and every toss was easy to handle, just a little slow. Deliberate.

McGraw gestured for Moody to come into the dirt, and he started chopping the ball down with the flat, frowning at the softness, but the ball still smacked and leaped. At this range, the baseball was nearly lethal, caroming unpredictably, faster than Moody could react.

Get in front of it, dammit! McGraw barked, That’s what you have a chest for, young man.

But he noticed the kid seemed used to this, even if he wasn’t very good at it. He winced at what he didn’t field, but he generally knocked grounders down and in front of him.

Chapter 2

Fleetwood Fades Away But Is Not Eclipsed

The spring mornings were bright and wet, heavy dew. Four days of daily workouts had begun to wear on them, it wasn’t all pitching. Mathewson threw every day, but only lightly after the first day.

Foster pitched some; a decent fastball, a bloopy curve that was easy to see and hard to hit, and a bewildering variety of breaking balls that Mathewson kept fouling off. But mostly, Foster talked while he pitched, explaining the situation.

Purely as a hypothetical, Mr. Mathewson, consider the circumstances, he said one day.

McGraw was catching, wearing a mask and mitt, with Moody sent to run from first and a long old man named Fleetwood playing shortstop.

There are no outs, or one out. A runner on first. I want you to hit a groundball to the middle of the infield for a double play. Where am I most likely to twirl one to produce the desired result?

Foster paused, waiting for a response. You will deliver a low pitch, somewhere, Mathewson said, the bat on his shoulder. Obviously. He heard McGraw frown behind the mask.

Just so, Foster said, and threw a high blooping curve inside. Mathewson leaned back.

Strike One, McGraw said, and Mathewson looked hard at him.

You leaned back, Christy, McGraw said. You were crowding the plate, bent over, looking for something low, then you leaned back like a fucking candy-ass.

It was just a flash, but Mathewson glanced at McGraw, whose eyes softened.

Catching the toss back, Foster stepped off the mound. What Mr. McGraw is saying in his inimitable clarity is that my curve has a large break, two feet, perhaps. And you provided the umpire with an excellent view of its break as you got out of the way. The umpire will naturally be impressed seeing such a curve, and he, too, will have anticipated the pitcher to throw something low. A high curve that breaks so much. Unexpected, of course. And being unexpected has a value. A called strike, perhaps.

He turned and looked at Fleetwood, who spit. Then Foster called out to Moody on first. What should he have done?

The sandy-eyed boy hollered back, obviously pleased. Get hisself hit.

And then?

A double steal! Rattling clash of cymbals, he heard in his mind.

But I was sure you would not do that, not yet, Mr. Mathewson, since you have only begun to appreciate Mr. McGraw’s tutelage.

Foster toed the rubber again, wound up, and pitched a fastball in almost exactly the same spot the curve had floated over the plate. Mathewson was late on it.

Now, Mr. Mathewson, you are down two strikes. You must protect the plate. Now is when I would throw you a low pitch. Unless the situation warranted something else.

Mathewson actually saw the pitch before it left Foster’s hand, the same snap of the wrist he used himself for the drop, and he swung to get a little more under the spinning ball, but not quite enough, and Fleetwood cleanly fielded it rolling with one big bare hand.

Hitting a baseball is the most difficult of physical skills, Foster said, Except of course successfully pitching a baseball past hitters. Moody! Come here. No, Mr. Mathewson, no baserunner. Up the third baseline, please. I want you to watch this. Please, bat left-handed, Moody.

A repertoire, McGraw said.

Then, fluidly, one pitch after another, Foster threw fastballs high, low, inside, and out; curve balls the same, the drop pitch likewise, a dozen, maybe 16 pitches, sometimes two in a row that were exactly the same but at different speeds and after each one, he looked to see if Mathewson had seen his point; it went here, it went there.

Now, watch this one.

With grim-faced Moody there, who hadn’t even swung his bat, Foster threw hard, with a peculiar, awkward motion, and Mathewson saw the ball break away from the left-handed hitter, Moody flicking the bat helplessly. He tilted his head. It looked like an optical illusion, and he realized that both Foster and McGraw were waiting on his reaction. This was what he was here for.

Let me see that again. I’ve never seen a right-handed pitcher throw one that broke away from a lefty.

Foster obliged. It was a wrenching kind of throw, but the ball came on hard, and sort of tumbled with a steep dropping motion from left to right.

How do you do that?

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Late the next afternoon, a general air of enjoyment suffused the field. Foster had spent the morning showing Christy how to hold the ball to spin it counterclockwise. Your strength from your back to the outside of the middle finger, then the wrench as you bring it all down to your stepping into it. His instruction, always gentle. Our muscles learn better when they’re too tired to work hard.

It was warmer, the lovely spring that comes so early in the south, and Fleetwood was shagging flies in the outfield, flies socked by Rube Foster, who took long turns at bat in between being unaccountably absent for short stretches. McGraw was playing infield, roaming around second and short, but getting little action.

Moody was catching, and Mathewson was watching for a new sign. The thumb, which meant the fadeaway, his new pitch.

Foster was carefully not looking at Moody behind the plate. He was calling out baserunning situations, First and third, no outs, and Moody was signaling pitches.

Foster was not as good a hitter as he was a pitcher. His bat was a little slow, and he tended to pop the ball up. But he knew the why of what to throw in every situation and anticipated or guessed right lots of times.

Old man Fleetwood was loping all around the grass while McGraw was watching ‘em sail over his head, because more often than not Moody was calling for ground ball pitches.

It was dusk, later every day. before McGraw finally called it over.

Matty was disappointed. He found himself loving the game stripped to essences: throw and catch, hit and not hit. But McGraw grinned, his Irish face suddenly quite happy. Gonna cook for us, Rube?

Started this morning. You buy the beer, boss.

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The showers were a big, dank, sloping concrete floor with a wide grate in the middle. Matty left his clothes on the bench and grabbed a towel from the big stack without thinking. There was naphtha soap in a little wire holder that left crisscross rust stains, and he was moving the thin lather around under the cold water when he saw Fleetwood start to step into the room, then back out again, quickly. He thought little of it and rinsed off.

Finished, he was dressing carefully and was still combing his hair when he noticed Moody had somehow been directed to shower before Matty was done, stealing softly past to get to his own clothes. Hi, he said.

Hellosah, Moody said, dripping and trying to hide himself.

You didn’t have to wait for your shower, Matty affirmed. There was plenty of room. I remember being a boy. Showering with men can be intimidating, he thought.

Moody looked down. Natty Matty spoke again while the young man was still dressing.

I was hoping you’d show me how to get to Mr. Drew’s house.

I’ll show you where the pit is, sa.

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The sunlight was just starting to slant through the pines. They couldn’t hear their steps and walked quietly, the boy subtly leading. The deep scent of the forest floor was striking in the low places. About the top of the third rise, it hit them: Matty was abruptly intensely aware of his hunger, as he smelled the slow fire and roasting meat. He was suddenly walking quite fast without being aware of it.

Halfway down the hill, Moody wasn’t with him anymore.

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I don’t like it, Moody thought.

Moving rapidly along just under the crest, he soon escaped the drifting scent. He was hungry, but that would have to wait. He started to run, the easy loping strides, stutter- stepping and jumps of true cross-country, letting his mind wander.

The day the old woman came, there was to be a marching band. He would have thought the pictures in his head were like the flicker shows in the theatres if he had ever seen one. He saw musicians forming beyond the bleachers, where a boy was watching from the darkness. Back that far, Moody’s memories had a brightly lit, thin quality, vivid and pleasant because there was so much horror close that he was not capable of going to or hiding from.

One of the joys of childhood, any childhood, is the underside and inside. One’s face is lower than things, to go where grownups can’t. The boy, was he 7? 8? 11, then? He didn’t know. He lived in the ballpark. He had always lived there, so far as he knew. He ate what he found, drank water from the proper faucets—someone might be watching—used the outhouse in the woods when no one was around, never the concrete bathroom. Now he was moving along under the bleachers, the bleaching boards, watching the band get ready, without a care in the world unless he let himself think.

The drummers were doing little rolls, the big bass drummer booming a few times, a cymbal crash or two. Two trumpet players spontaneously competed to finish a few scales faster, hitting ever higher octaves at the end. Some muttered at a lingering stench, like barbecue. One naïve flutist asked what food they cooked at the ballgames, but no one answered. No one seemed shocked. Best not to talk about it. A local matter.

It was the tuba players, leaning over their heavy brass still resting on the ground, who saw him first.

What’s that, Bob? A shadow was moving under the unsanded side of the thick pine boards, the nails sticking down.

Bob, fat in his red and blue uniform, the bright brass buttons standing out, sweating at 8 am, squinted in the slanted light. Satisfied, he swung his heavy horn up to his chest. Some pickaninny.

Something about that moment made it like home base for his dreams, the place he always started or came back to.

The floating scent faded as he got under the drifting breeze, running softly on the cushiony ground of the piney woods. Working around the little hill, getting it out of his head…

There was an old man who was supposed to take care of the grounds, but he mostly drank from a fruit jar on his porch about a mile away…

The old man and his fruit jar had found two men to tend the park every week, Civil War veterans.

Moody tried never to think about them, yet somehow, he knew it all, more clearly for trying to un-know what he’d overheard in snatches of conversation here and there. One was missing three fingers on his right hand, only the thumb and a pinky made powerful to compensate. Moody knew from someone that when the surgeon stopped the bleeding, he had muttered one, two, three strikes, as he cut away the jagged bone back to the joints in the middle and ring fingers. The index finger had been severed even more neatly than a scalpel.

That man mowed the lawn.

The other was simply mysterious and terrifying, so much that Moody couldn’t escape, sensing the rhythm and balance in the way he scythed weeds. His eyes were very calm. He had been a handsome man. His arms and legs and broad chest were all intact; he moved with grace and force.

Below his nose and back to his ears, there was a wide bandana, like a veil, which spread out to his chest. It was as large as a small tablecloth, which, in fact, it was, cut and sewn to fit. It was sewn to a hat in the back. He never spoke.

Neither Moody nor, if the truth be known, anyone else in the little town knew much about him, except that he had been an officer at Malvern Hill.

They frightened Moody; two robust old men, one with a long beard, spitting brown juice; the other with bright eyes below a hat and above a tablecloth and a very sharp knife on his belt. He dreamed about them.

But they were easy to evade and only came in daylight.

On sunny days like that one, especially the morning after a game, it was happy and quiet below the boards. The sun would shine in sideways. Raccoons weren’t frightening like the grass men, but the boy knew to keep away, especially if he saw them in daylight, which was seldom.

He would wander around looking for the good things people had dropped: half-filled cups of soda and beer, the bitten-off, unchewed roll, maybe with a piece of sausage inside. Sometimes oranges or peach parts. Often, they dropped pretzels, and now and then the raccoons didn’t find them. The boy loved the big chunks of salt baked into them.

During the games, in the hot time, almost every day, he made himself invisible. The presence of the crowd soothed him, so long as no one knew he was there. But that was easy. There was a place underneath the end of the visitor’s dugout, inside the structure of the stands, where he could see the whole field. His earliest memories, after the blur, were of sitting there and watching the games.

Boom-badda-boomcrashDA! Love the brass.

Chapter 3

If It Was a Test, He Passed

Past the little tail of the hill, Moody could turn and get below Foster’s house and garage. He came out of the woods to the once-paved road about a mile away, a soft breeze behind him, now. His feet took him directly, while his mind wandered, lost.

The boy didn’t remember how he came to live under the bleachers at the ballpark, but he could recall exactly the first time he heard a band play. It was the first 4th of July of the 20th century. He kept hearing the announcer say that over the new public address system. It didn’t sound like anything human so much as it sounded like a human voice made mechanical.

There was a ball game, and the boy had parked himself by the gap in the boards. It was a perfect fit, at the time. He was eating from a nearly full box of popcorn that someone had sat on, and then knocked beneath the seats. Their weight had nearly closed the box, so the kernels hadn’t scattered. Moody was savoring the congealed butter when he heard the first booming of the drums. He was shocked, he nearly jumped and squealed, but he’d learned not to draw attention to himself. He just stared, kernels clinging to his mouth.

It was intoxicating. Row on row dressed in the brightest clothes he’d ever seen, the sheer volume at first chaotic and cacophonic to him and then, all at once he realized his ears were hearing the depth and melding of it, his eyes could see the orchestrated movements of the lines, how everything changed all the time and all at once: the brass, the woodwinds, the startling hammering of the drums, the cymbals. He could feel the vibrations in his heart, and thus began the boy’s lifelong love for brass bands. When he was an old, old man, he would tell the little children who found him a source of endless mystery. It was how they shook my little ribs, baby. Boom, boom, boom-boom.

There came a day when he was too big to fit into the hole by the visitor’s dugout. He didn’t know when the long nails got there, but one day they had always been there, and he stopped climbing down and in to watch the games.

Why do I always remember the nails when I think of the day she showed up?

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Matty came down into a big-ish yard, with a rough rectangle laid out in white stones around where the fire was, with a whole half hog in a kind of wire cage set down above a hot glowing bed, under the smoke. Rube was grinning at him, seated on a short barrel, with a jug on one side and a bucket with a kind of pole on the other. There were perhaps a dozen men around, mostly black with two white men, all standing shyly back a bit, looking at his Bucknell sweater and perfectly curled hair.

But he was used to that. Hello, fellows.

Smells good, Rube.

He glanced into the bucket with the long-handled brush. What’s that?

He looked around, a slight smile building, at the general, knowing laughter.

Ask him what’s in it, somebody called.

Fleetwood took the man’s arm and stepped closer. Mr. Mathewson, this yar is Preacher Alonzo Hewitt. We call him Big Book. Tate. Mr. Thomas. Oh, just interduce yourselfs.

Hello, Preacher, Matty shook hands politely Tate. Mr. Thomas. He waved at the rest.

Big Book was nearly as wide as he was tall, but he was short, and his palms were calloused. He gripped Matty’s hand, and leaned forward, conspiratorially. God bless you, young man.

Matty controlled his recoil. He could smell whiskey and, though unfamiliar, the upstanding young man thought Book might drink particularly foul