"Can we be logical about this, Sis?" Jaybird's dad wondered how many times he had used that line when he was to convincing his wife about one thing or another. They had been married almost 11 years, and it seemed they spent a lot of time arguing over kids and money. They had too many of one and not enough of the other. Not that it bothered him that much, the problem, at least the way he saw it, was that his wife was a worry-wart, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about changing her. All he could do was try to handle it, one crisis at a time.
"Dammit, Coach," said Jaybird's Mom. She hated it when he asked her to be logical. Logic would not bring Jaybird back, and for the moment that was the only thing she was interested in.
Jaybird's Dad recognized the signs of major trouble; his wife rarely swore, and when she did he knew he was about to lose. He backed up and started over. "Okay," he said, "forget logic, let's talk about reality."
Jaybird's mom agreed. "The reality is that Jaybird is in St. Louis with a fruitcake," she said, "and we need to go get him. What are we waiting for, Coach?" She had been sitting on a picnic table bench under a Persimmon tree near the community pump, but now she stood and stepped onto the bench so that instead of looking up at her husband and her brother, she was looking down on them with a defiant expression on her face.
Coach looked at Uncle George. This was a tactic he had never seen before; he did not take it as an encouraging sign . He was rescued by the appearance of his father-in-law, Jaybird's grandfather, Otto Giessow himself.
"Why are you standing on top of that bench, Edie?" asked Grampa Giessow.
Edie Giessow Frederick was steaming, and she was not shy about telling her father why. " It's because they won't go get Jaybird." She pointed at her husband and her brother. "He's in St.Louis with a lunatic, and his finger is cut off," she continued, her voice rising to a higher volume than she had intended..
Grampa Giessow was of the old school. The school that thought there was a place for women, but that the place was far away from where serious decisions were made because of their tendency to become hysterical and their inclination to be illogical. He looked at Coach and Uncle George with a slight roll of his eyes, but before he could speak, Jaybird's mom, in a lowered, almost menacingly lowered, voice, said, "And don't try to talk me out of anything, Pop, we have to go after Jaybird."
Grampa Giessow said, "Is anybody going to tell me what's going on?"
Coach tried to explain. "Jaybird's run away again," he began, "we think he went to the ball game in St. Louis ..."
He was interrupted by his wife in a shrill voice he had never heard before. "What do you mean think?" she screeched. She lowered her voice from a shriek to merely loud, and continued the explanation, informing her father about the telephone call from Grubville, their visit with Dr. Land, and even seeing Jaybird's finger in the formaldehyde jar. "The doctor told us that Jaybird had gone to St. Louis with a 30 year-old guy called Crazy Dan to see the Browns play a doubleheader," she concluded.
Jaybird's dad added, "He also told us that Jaybird said he would be back, and for us not to worry."
Grampa Giessow shrugged. "So why are you worrying?" he asked.
It occurred to Jaybird's mom that she was worrying because it was a mother's job to worry, but somehow when she heard her father put it like that it was oddly reassuring. She got down off the bench and went to the pump for some water. In spite of what they might think, she thought of herself as a logical person, always ready to listen to an explanation, and never unreasonable. She did not believe in carrying grudges, as long as an affront was not deeply intended. She thought her husband was genuinely concerned about Jaybird, not as much as she was to be sure, but perhaps enough. She thought she had done all she could do in the present situation, at least enough to warrant some concessions and perhaps some special treatment. She was ready to listen, but of course she would never say so.
She did not have to say anything. Jaybird's dad knew it was over when she walked away without a word. He followed her. "Listen, Sis," he said, "here's what we're going to do."
Jaybird's mom drank from the tin cup dangling by a chain from the wooden lattice surrounding the pump, and looked at her husband with a resentful glance that was her way of slowly cooling down from her genuinely felt anger. It was a look that also was intended to let him know that she was not a pushover, and would not give up easily.
Seeing this look, Jaybird's dad breathed an inward sigh of relief, because he knew it signaled that he would be allowed to do it his way at a price he could live with. "After our game today," he began.
She interrupted as he knew she would. "You mean you are actually going to play a game when your son is in danger?"
He pushed on. "George and I will drive to St. Louis," he said. "If we don't run into any problems we should get there before it gets dark ... around 8 or 9 o'clock. We'll stay at your parent's house on Delor, and get to Sportsman's Park around 10 o'clock the next morning, in time for batting practice. If Jaybird is there he'll be watching batting practice, you can count on that. Then after the games we'll bring him home. Okay?"
Jaybird's mom would not fall for that old trick. She would never in a thousand years express instant agreement to a solution she had not herself suggested, as reasonable as it might sound. She flung half a cupful of water at her husband's feet, and with a toss of her head stalked off toward Port-O'-Peoria.
Jaybird's dad sighed. It was a sigh both of relief and of frustration. He would recover from this spat in due time, but it always left him drained of energy if not of purpose. It was Jaybird again. The kid was a puzzle. Jaybird's dad had nothing to go on ... memories of his own father were hidden away somewhere in his brain, somewhere that was not available to him. He watched how other dads handled their sons, and he tried to copy what he thought might work, but it seemed like lately he could never do anything right with Jaybird. Why was the kid always running away? "Coach!" It was Uncle George.
Jaybird's dad stirred himself and looked around. "What's goin' on, George?" he asked.
"I think one of our bottles just exploded," he said, "here comes mom, and she don't look too happy."
Jaybird' grandmother, Catherine Giessow was not opposed to making home brew, in fact she encouraged it. Grandma Giessow liked nothing better than a glass of beer before bedtime, to say nothing of an occasional glass to make the day run smoother. She much preferred home-made beer to the watered down commercial brands they sold in the store. But Grandma Giessow had a low tolerance for incompetence in producing her treasured home brew.
Coach and George were currently in charge of keeping the bottles filled, and they were made to answer for it if the weekly batch failed. It was an inexact science. Here's how it worked: On Saturday they mixed a quart of barley malt with one pound of sugar, a cake of Fleishman's yeast, two average sized sliced raw potatoes, and four and a half gallons of water in a five gallon crock. The recipe was doubled if there was a need for 10 gallons, which there just happened to be on this busy July 4th weekend. The brew was mixed well and left to "work" until Wednesday when it was siphoned off, being careful to avoid stirring up the half inch of sediment on the bottom of the crock. The brew was siphoned into long-necked brown beer bottles to each of which a teaspoon of sugar had been added. The bottles were then capped with a hand operated machine.If they were lucky the brew had finished "working" before capping, but more than occasionally alcohol and carbon dioxide continued to accumulate after capping, and if the capping was done efficiently, the build-up of gas caused the thin glass to shatter rather than the cap to pop off.
Grandma Giessow was not very big, but what she lacked in size she made up for in spirit. "George!" she cried, "I will not stand for it, do you hear me? I will not stand for explosions under my sink. How many times do I have to tell you and John William to wait `til the yeast is finished before bottling the brew?"
Grandma Giessow stood before them in her ankle length thin cotton summer dress, her pale blue eyes flashing. She willingly endured the countless hardships and difficulties associated with raising a family and indulging her husband's fantasies in this wilderness; she was a true frontier woman. But at this time in her life, heading for the middle of the 20th century, there were two things that she demanded. Home brew was one, but also from 9 until 10 o'clock in the morning, Monday through Friday, she hung out the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her cottage door while she escaped into the worlds of Helen Trent and Young Doctor Malone sponsored by Rinso and Oxydol on daytime radio.
Uncle George was contrite. "I'm sorry, Mom," he said, "it's just that ..."
Grandma Giessow was not in a mood for lame explanations. "Never mind the excuses, young man," she said, "just get in there and clean up the mess. Honestly George, such a waste."
It was a mess all right. Even before Uncle George and Jaybird's dad entered Grandma and Grandpa Giessow's cottage, called Relax, they could smell it. Pieces of brown glass were strewn all over the floor near the sink. A pool of brown, smelly liquid coated the glass. Jaybird's dad picked up a wooden bucket and began to put the glass fragments into it. The remainder of the unexploded bottles were stored under the sink behind a cloth curtain. They were like time bombs, set to go off at random moments.
"Maybe we should uncap the rest of those bottles, before they blow up," suggested Jaybird's dad.
Uncle George agreed. "Good idea," he said, "we could let off the pressure and then re-cap them."
It took a certain amount of courage to pick up one of those bottles. Uncle George gingerly reached for the first bottle. When he uncapped it the brown liquid geysered like champagne, leaving only enough behind for a couple of swallows. George sampled it, then handed the bottle to Jaybird's dad. "Umm, not bad," he said, "damn shame to waste it." Uncle George reached for another bottle just as it blew up. A piece of glass hit him smack between the eyes, knocking him backwards where he sat on the floor, dazed and bleeding. Jaybird's dad kneeled next to him for a close look. "I think you just got lucky, George," he said. He fetched a towel, a bottle of peroxide, and some gauze and adhesive tape.
The cottage door burst open. Grandma Giessow was first in, followed by Grandpa Giessow and Jaybird's mom. The sight of Uncle George sitting on the floor bleeding from the head brought a mixed reaction. Jaybird's mom immediately thought of Jaybird and sank into a chair, her hand over her mouth, her mind imagining a bleeding Jaybird alone somewhere in the city calling for help. Grandma and Grandpa Giessow took a more realistic view, they had been around a long time, and had seen much. They were cool. They quickly determined that their son's injury was nowhere near as bad as it at first appeared. They would not indulge in misplaced sympathy. "Now see what you've done, George," said Grandma Giessow, " I hope it teaches you a lesson." She turned to look at her husband who was suppressing a grin. "And don't you dare try to make a joke out of this, daddy."
Grandpa Giessow had seen a lot of spilled beer in his time, one of his favorite sayings was "No use crying over spilled beer." He would not use that line in front of his wife at this time because he had actually seen her cry over spilled beer, which she was on the verge of doing at the moment. "Come on Katie," he said, "let's get out of here before another bottle blows ... I'll buy you a Hyde Park over at the store." He took her arm and began guiding her toward the door. He opened the door then turned and said, "Oh, John, don't forget to deliver that ice up the hill before you go to the ballgame. Art Abbie needs 50 pounds, and Billy Deibel wants 25, can you handle that?" "Sure, Pop," said Jaybird's dad, "I'll take care of it."
Jaybird's dad was in charge of ice at Giessow's Cottage Farm. On Friday afternoons he would drive the Cottage Farm Ford pickup truck 15 miles to Cedar Hill where he would pay 90¢ for a 320 pound block of ice that, if he was lucky, he would sell to his Cottage Farm customers for a penny a pound. He bought 10 blocks at a time, and some weeks he actually made a profit ... he always got lots of exercise. At Cottage Farm the blocks of ice were stored in a large box 6 feet square and 8 feet high made from thick oak planks and featuring a heavy wooden door. The ice box was located in a roofed-over area directly adjacent to the back of the store.
Jaybird's dad swung open the massive door to the ice box and stared into the damp, murky darkness; the big blocks of ice seemed like chilly spirits waiting their turn to escape the dungeon. A puff of cold air swept over his face, feeling good in the July heat. Uncle George, his face marked with a white-taped X at the top of his nose, had walked across Olive Street to bring the pickup truck parked beneath the Fun House. Jaybird's dad took an ice-pick from a holder near the back door of the store, lifted a pair of ice-tongs from a hook, and entered the box. The door started to swing shut behind him and he stepped back to prop it open with his leg. He needed something to hold the door open. He remembered that a length of two-by-four was usually available for this purpose, and was looking around for it when Uncle George backed the truck from across the street to a position in front of the ice box door.
"Hold this door open, George," said Jaybird's dad, "while I cut a couple of small blocks."
Uncle George held the door as Jaybird's dad entered the dark box, and began to chip away at one of the big blocks with the ice-pick. George was reflecting on his bad luck to have those bottles explode, and at his good fortune that the flying glass did not hit his eyes, when he became aware that Jaybird's dad had stopped chipping. "Anything wrong, Coach?" he called. Coach did not answer. George stared into the shadowy box, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. He could make out his brother-in-laws' form standing next to one of the big ice blocks, but he was as motionless as the ice, as though he too was frozen.
"Coach!" shouted George.
Jaybird's dad heard the shout, and stirred as though awakening from a dream. He looked at George oddly, as if trying to remember who he was. He dropped the ice-pick and stepped outside the ice box into the warm summer air. "What is it, Coach?" asked George, "what's wrong?"
Jaybird's dad spoke so softly that George had to move closer to hear. "The cold and the dark," he said, " I've been there before...I heard guns." He shook his head as if trying to clear it of unwanted thoughts.
George knew about the background of Jaybird's dad; the whole family knew. In the first years after he married Edie Giessow, they thought maybe there would come a time when he would remember what had happened to him in France during the war, and maybe even something about his life prior to that. But as the years went by, those early hopes were forgotten, and so it came as a surprise to George, almost like the exploding beer bottles, that insights into Coach's mysterious past might be surfacing here in these most unlikely circumstances. "Is your past coming back to you, Coach?" he asked. Jaybird's dad shook his head. "I don't know, George," he said, "I've never had such feelings before ... it was ..." he paused. "It was like I was transported back in time, the cold and the darkness ... like I was in a dugout waiting for a shell to explode. Maybe it's starting to come back."
George said, "I think that happens. There was a movie ... Ronald Colman ..."
Coach interrupted. "I'm not sure I want to remember," he said. "Part of me wants to know, but another part of me ... maybe there's stuff I don't want to know about."
"Yeah," said George, " but right now we need to get this ice to those customers, and we need to get the field ready for the game."
In addition to being the pitcher and second baseman, respectively, for the Cottage Farm Mudcats, Jyabird's dad and Uncle George were also the groundskeepers, if it was possible to refer to the gravel-strewn infield, and cow-pasture outfield as grounds. A contest had been held among players and tenants to name the team, and Mudcats had won by a narrow vote over Farmers ... some of the players liked the idea of calling themselves the Cottage Cheese Farmers, the Trotliners, or the Codgers, but Mudcats was the consensus.
Jaybird's dad nodded. "Right," he said, "did you put everything in the truck?"
"I think so," said Uncle George, "you want to check?"
Jaybird's dad looked back at the ice box , then turned back to George. "Okay," he said, "I'll check the stuff, you get the ice."
The Cottage Farm baseball field was located up the hill, past the Catholic Church, pas t the last cottage, past everything. It was the last outpost before the trees and forest reclaimed the land. The field was laid out in a north-south direction which meant that when games went longer than expected, everybody on the right side of the infield found themselves looking into a ball of fire when the sun dropped on the western horizon. A five-tier, 10-feet long section of wooden bleachers rose bravely beyond the third-base foul line only a few feet beyond the backless wooden player's bench. In the weeds growing underneath the bleachers a swarm of hornets had built a nest. A wire-mesh backstop extended 10 feet above a four-foot high wood base. Standing at home-plate, with a game in progress, only the head and shoulders of the left fielder were visible as the field tilted precipitously down a slope heading for the bordering trees.
The infield had been scraped free of the timothy and alfalfa that normally grew here, and indeed still covered the outfield. Three dusty canvass bases, looking like lumpy brown pillows, were lying on the field at roughly right angles to each other somewhere near 90 feet apart Grass was in short supply at Giessow's Cottage Farm and had certainly never found it's way anywhere near the ballfield. The infield, sprinkled with pebbles, was entirely flat with a slab of wood embedded in the ground where the pitcher took his stance. Roughly 60 feet away was a piece of flat limestone that served as home plate where Jaybird's dad stood holding an oddly shaped piece of equipment that looked like a vacuum cleaner. On a recent trip to DeSoto the Coach had returned with two treasures he found at a second hand store there ... a 12 inch diameter bell for the church, and a hand-held lime dispenser for lining the ball field. Standing at home plate getting ready to lay down the foul lines, he looked out at the field seeing various shades of brown . All along the first base side of the field, and spilling down the right-field line the Hillsboro Hillbillies were beginning to limber up. Their uniform was mostly bib overalls over sleeveless undershirts except for one man in regulation baseball pants and stockings, a long-sleeved sweatshirt and a short-billed gray baseball cap with a blue H on it. Baseball would be played here today.
Sixty miles north, as the crow flies, Jaybird, wearing a St. Louis Browns uniform only two sizes too big , stood behind the hard rubber home plate at Sportsman's Park gazing in wonder at everything that surrounded him. Precisely 60 feet and six inches away, the smoothly sloped pitcher's mound rose before him. The mound was surrounded by the most beautiful grass surface Jaybird had ever seen. Three gleaming white bases were anchored firmly in place, exactly 90 feet apart. Sparkling white chalk lines opened out to his right and left, running in unwavering straight lines to the left field wall 353 feet away, and to the right field wall 320 feet away. With his new spectacles Jaybird could read the 430 foot sign on the centerfield fence. Beyond the smooth dirt of the infield he saw various shades of green. To Jaybird's left in front of the third base dugout he saw the Chicago White Sox begin to limber up in neat gray road uniforms featuring the word CHICAGO in dark block letters across their chests. Baseball would be played here today.