“Yeah. Ballplayers have nicknames, Foghorn Wilson, Cannonball Morris, Grasshopper Jim Whitney.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “Must be a male thing.”
He gave a snort.
“Well it must be,” she said. “They don’t refer to Betsy Ross as Stitches or call Jane Austen Inky Fingers.”
“What about Bloody Mary?”
Margaret raised her chin. “No doubt she was given that name by some man.”
He gave her one of those male looks—where they try to act as if their patience is being tested. She gave a short wave of her hand. “Go on.”
“I forgot where I was.”
“Whoopla Hunter.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, he was on the mound. Billy told him to mix up the pitches. Anything Whoopla threw at me that day, I hit. Two years later I was on the team, playing all over. Places like Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boston. After the pennant in ’78 we even played exhibition games in England and France for a few months. That was why I learned to dance. They hired a dancing instructor for the whole team before we left the States. Once in Europe, we’d play ball games during the day and go to fancy dances at night.” He stopped talking.
She waited. Finally she nudged his arm. “So what happened?”
“Billy died of a heart attack just before the end of the season in ’83. There was a three-way tie for the pennant, to be played off in road games between Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.” He tossed the rock aside and just stared down at the sand, his wrists resting on his bent knees. “Gamblers got involved and offered big payoffs to players willing to throw games.” He stopped abruptly.
“And?”
He shrugged. “We lost. There was a big scandal, and players were blacklisted.” He looked up again. “I was one of them.”
“I don’t believe you would have thrown a game.”
“Hell, Smitty, I stole my first wallet when I was six.”
“I don’t care what you did before. I don’t believe you would have thrown a ball game.”
He was silent. “You called me a crook yourself.”
“I was wrong.”
“Jesus, the devil must be ice-skating.”
“Changing the subject won’t work.”
“Yeah, it never does with you.”
“I only have one question.”
“Yeah, yeah, and you’re right, I didn’t throw any games. They blacklisted five of us. Two were guilty, and the other three were considered troublemakers by the new owner. And I dished out a lot of crap.”
“That wasn’t the question I wanted answered.”
“It wasn’t?”
She shook her head.
“What then?”
